In Part 3 of this series, I argued that the Iowa caucuses will likely have no impact on the campaign for the Democratic nomination (which is likely to be won by Sen. Hillary Clinton). But I did not analyze the GOP race.
At The American Prospect, Thomas F. Schaller argues that Iowa will also be meaningless for the Republicans.ÂÂ
However, in setting forth the case for Iowa being generally meaningless, Jay Cost noted:
Two observations are relevant. First, Iowa and New Hampshire frequently disagree. They only have agreed four times, which is a sign that Iowa does not usually influence New Hampshire. Two of those four times, 1980 D and 2000 D, were contests where there was a clear frontrunner, so it probably would not be fair to say that Iowa influenced New Hampshire. The other two times were 1976 D and 2004 D. Here, you could make a case that Iowa influenced New Hampshire. And what did those two elections have in common? They both lacked strong frontrunners.
Thus, the influence of Iowa and New Hampshire seems to depend upon the quality of the frontrunners. Iowa can influence New Hampshire, and New Hampshire can upend the campaign dynamic, when the frontrunners are not strong. When the frontrunners are strong – at best, they only slow the march to victory.
This gives us an angle on understanding the role momentum might play this cycle. Clearly, the Republicans have no pre-election year frontrunner – like the Democrats in 1988. This means that momentum definitely could be a factor. As I said, we probably will not see the kind of successful slow-building momentum akin to what McCain almost had in 2000, though it is still possible. What is more likely is momentum that comes from a win in Iowa and/or New Hampshire – a candidate then uses those victories to launch himself beyond the rest of a lackluster field.
The remaining question this year is — given the lack of a strong GOP frontrunner — whether a Huckabee win in Iowa might generate more than one type of momentum.  As Schaller notes:
McCain, in fact, could become the effective “winner” in Iowa. Consider that the Arizona senator bounced up to 13 percent in the final Register poll, despite investing little resources here, and would make headlines if he climbs closer to 20 percent in the final results. Whatever McCain’s showing in Iowa, if Huckabee holds on to win, Romney will be damaged headed into his face-off with McCain in New Hampshire. Is it any wonder that McCain decided to fly back to Iowa on the eve of the caucuses for one last set of events designed, presumably, to twist the knife in Romney’s back a little more?
Put in the parlance of my Part 3, McCain might well hope that Huckabee bests Romney on the theory that such a loss would strengthen McCain’s claim on the mantle of NotHuckabee in the more influential New Hampshire primary. If Romney ended up losing in both Iowa and New Hampshire, he would have to seriously reconsider how long he wants to continue to tap his own personal fortune to stay in a campaign with no obvious victories on the horizon.
I would think that losing in New Hampshire would be quite a blow to Mitt, being from right next door.
To put it more verbosely, it looks to me that New Hampshire likes Massachusetts politicians in its primary: Kennedy, Dukakis, Tsongas, and Kerry among Dems. Even Henry Cabot Lodge for the GOP.
All roads lead to McCain for these people but it’s only cause they think that we’re fucking idiots. If McCain were so freaking inevitable they wouldn’t have had to manufacture Huckabee, would they?
I’m sure we can all agree that Huckabee simply has the wrong hair for the job. In fact, I’m not sure when we last had a comb-over in the White House.
He also has scads of loose excess skin like a penis but life sized.
….and the MSM has conveniently ignored this fact: Huck lost a big chunk of blubber in the past years, but a quick perusal of Google Images will show you that he’s gaining it back. Flip-flopper.
…..bad teeth too. Huckabee? More like Huckabuckchuck.
….wait wait wait…….that was not the right thing to do. I would like you all to ignore that last comment. That’s not how I want to conduct myself. Sure I could not select the “Say It!” button, but then no one would ever know what kind of insult I’ve decided to avoid. ROLL TAPE!
McCain also can’t even say the words “second term” without dribbling on himself. Geriatric media whore.
And also I reject al’s transparent attempt to gutterize our democratic process. If you can’t make your point without vituperation maybe it’s not a point that needs to be made. Ever think of that?
happyfeet and al – you are killing me. Folds of penis skin on Huck? Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Huckabuckchuck – classic
HA!! Fat chance of you dragging me down to your level, happy. Just ask yourself one question, when a person uses an 11-letter word when a couple’a 3 letter jobs and a comma will do, what’s he hiding? Respectfully of course.
And I’ll vituper any old time the mood strikes me, thank you very much.
FIGHT!!!
Coming from happy, in re. Huck, that was brilliant. His daughters are just so dang cute, aren’t they happy?
happyfeet wins again.
Will I always be Jan to your Marcia, happy?
I think he just has the one daughter, who is actually noticeably less heinous them his sons, but yeah, them’s all been beaten with the ugly stick mercilessly. Huckalugee is all about how you don’t punish the children for the sins of the parents but just look at them and ask me what they did to deserve that? Poor little evolutionary throwbacks.
Oh. We’re all winners when we participate in the democratic process, al! Huck the vote! Purple fingers, corn peoples!
I’d like to teach the world to sing and furnish it with Huck!
It does feel good!
I think Huck has offered to bath in ethanol if he wins. Romney was seen testing his barbeque clicker…
FOOOOOOM!!!
BJ – Is that anything like that youtube video of the guy trying to grill a steak with liquid nitrogen?
Ah but BJ, Huckaboom would just spring into a crouch while simultaneously pulling his loose buttocks skin over his head like a gelatinous cloak of invincibility, stop-drop-and-roll clear of the danger and have plenty of dermis left over for grafting. Checkmate. Your king, sir.
Mmmmm. Roast Huck medallions with wild fennel seeds and a white wine mushroom sauce. Damn. And I’m going home to soup.
happy,
I can’t tell you the exact number of vegetable-soup-dieters that have punched their own ticket, but they all were in the 2nd week. That much I do know. Keep it together man.
…great – now I’m hungry. I thought I had a bag of Huck rinds around here somewhere………
But if Huck did it and he was all hogzilla then I’m so set I figured. I haven’t actually started yet, I have to stop at Ralph’s and get the stuff on the way home. And I have to remember a collander too. And one of those plastic container thingies so I can bring it to work after it’s all done. I got the Martha Stewart plastic containers cause I felt sorry for her but none of the lids actually fit and they’re all kind of stained now cause I went through a phase where I thought I could cook Indian food.
I was thinking Annapurna was more of a Tupperware lady.
If I was placed on a vegetable soup diet, I would punch my own ticket, quickly.
Make the world a better place,
Punch Huck’s kids in the face.
They make that fullback from West Virginia look like a supermodel.
I know. I should have gone with the Tupperware but I think someone on teh NPR was talking about how KMart was going to have to dump Martha and, well, the injustice of it all so I went to Kmart.com and got like a 24-piece set of food storagey things. Actually I remember I got two sets and gave one to a friend who threw them away cause the lids don’t actually fit.
Geez you guys, act like GUYS fer cryin’ out loud. Grab a cereal bowl and duct tape some foil over the top.
Tupperware! My achin’ back! Whta’s next poufy sleeved shirts and pantaloons? Yeesh!
Somewhere, in a dimly lit corner, framed by the glow of his LED screen, Karl weeps at the utter desecration of his work.
– Feets. This entire clown car election cycle, brought to you by the beltway PR department, tells the world the “political lid” of America doesn’t fit.
– No wonder every tin-brained despot in the world keeps attacking us. I’d attack us too if my WalMart gift card had any serious charge power left.
News flash: Taking a cue from their intellectual minders (Limbaugh, Hannity and the conservative media establishment (Fox, the WSJ editorial page, etc), PW regular readers declare they are independent thinkers by attacking the minister as not being conservative enough! Nice work if you can get it, but Huckabee should have realized the Club for Growth ain’t gonna let be President if you raise a tax.
You guys go on ahead a trash the fine governor and his children. Shows an intellectual depth beyond the capacity of most. Meanwhile, the only person on the Republican side who says things like “jesus said to be nice to each other”, just isn’t wacky enough for you.
Again, let’s be explicit, it’s nice to see you trash one of your own because the big wigs told you to. Nice independent thinking
JD:
Engineers, Golf and liquid nitrogen…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VJk2DCAW5g
I’m just saying, why don’t you go ahead and take your pseudointellectual analysis, fold it up nice and pointy, cram it up your ass, and then fuck right off. That might be entertaining. Otherwise you’ve got nothing. You might as well take it with you before you’ve got even less.
I’m Just Saying…
What, have you given up on Brownback already? STAY THE COURSE!!!
Is it just me or do I see “I’m just saying” and the Honorable Governor Huckabee sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G?
Fucking Christofascist.
Wait. Who the hell does support Huckster besides half the evangelicals?
Um, Pablo? We prefer God Bothering Nazis if that’s all the same to you.
Has Ron Paul bought a caucus yet?
Not giving a crap what Rush, Fox, WSJ or anybody else says (and speaking, BTW, as an Evangelical) I think that Huck is a nice man and a good Christian whose idea of Conservative values do not mesh very well with mine: Taxes, Immigration, Amnesty, Pardons, Iraq, GWOT, need I go on?
Believe it or not, many conservative Christians are not Jesus stepfords who fall at the feet of the first guy to invoke the name. I’ll shake his hand and pray for him but I’m not likely to vote for him.
Clear enough for you?
– Now now guys. IJS is just trying to raise the level of discourse and keep us knuckle dragging NeoCon-Classic-Liberal Hacks on track here. I measn we’re blaspheming the very heart of bible thumping, gun rack, flyover America. Shame on us. We’ll all roast in hell.
– Maybe even demand we scrap the entire pile of garbage, money and time wasting, that is the primary process. The horrors. So shape up before the Devil steals your absentee ballots you dispicable morons.
one of your own?
Huckabee is one of our own now? That’s way dumb. It was the media who decided he was “one of our own.” Like Katie Fucking Couric and that harpy that used to be on that game show. Just cause Huckabee and his Arkie clan are straight from Central Casting for what the woefully estrogen-deprived Cokie Goddamn Roberts thinks a Republican is just don’t make it so.
It’s a big tent. Oh wait. That’s the Huckabee’s laundry.
Again, let’s be explicit, it’s nice to see you trash one of your own because the big wigs told you to. Nice independent thinking
Shows what you know. It wasn’t the big wigs, it was the implant inside of my head.
Hi’ya, Huck!
Hey, any truth to the rumor you’re gonna rename the University of Arkansas after yourself?
IJS sounds an awful lot like that lying poofter fluffer timmah. I’m just sayin’
What you know about how we think is about the same as what I know about about goat felching. Nothing.
Now timmah, scurry on back underneath your rock, warm up that KY, and practice on Caric until you get to achieve your lifelong dream of rubbing one out for GiGi and the Cabana Boyz.
I just realized why the fucktards cannot begin to understand why we might not care for Huck. It is incomprehensible for them to not support a fellow traveler, except Joe, and he is a Jew, so that is alright. They view the godbotherers as a voting bloc, an identity group. And libs, they do not stray.
– I don’t know JD. Looks like SecProg Libs, at least the children of the Marxist corn types, are straying a lot from the choosen one. A lot of My Leftist griends are convinced HRC is a Limo, and say openly they will not support her. The Left dumping the anointed cult leader? Che is truly dead.
– As one of them told me recently. We may have some really difficult positions to defend, but a lot of us are determined not to make another Kerrible mistake.
– Early returns:
– Democrats – 90% reporting
– Obama – 37%
– Edwards – 30%
– Hillery – 30%
– Richardson – 2%
– Republicans – 68% reporting
– Huckabee – 34%
– Romney – 25%
– Thompson – 14%
– McCain – 13%
– McCain spokesman on FOX declaring what a great win it is for McCain? Say what?
If McCain placed any higher they would have had to adjust his meds I think is what they mean.
4 years until we have to listen to the media and the candidates treat those ass monkeys in Iowa like they are some prescient beings. Hell, they are hardly sentient, after picking Huckabee.
You gotta hope something can be done to squelch this nonsense by them. Freaky heehawing little Malachais.
Oh. That should be *then* instead of them.
Freaky heehawing little Malachais.
This will be my screensaver at the office tomorrow. Every day I pick a quote from here, and people stop by to see what random wisdom I will have posted.
That’s kind of neat, really.
I cannot use that one about Huckabee and the penis skin shield, so the freaky heehawing little Malachai’s is the next best. People ask why I do not like him so much, and I just say “happyfeet”. They tend to leave me alone after that.
RTO – That 8 page soup recipe was the winner yesterday. I could not read that and not laugh. Don’t ask me why.
I’m so all over that recipe and I printed it at work today for shopping but I hit a hitch tonight cause the boss-person needed me late so when I got to Ralph’s it was already kind of a scene and it’s not amenable to shopping for vegetables and stuff. And so I at least tried to get the collander but when I went through the express lane the guy didn’t know how much the collander was and started this intricate price check ritual which involved him disappearing and coming back and when he reached for his microphone thinger I just told him to forget it cause the important lady behind me was sighing a lot.
I do not care much for important people, or people who sigh. algore comes to mind. immediately.
Yes… usually I would have played it out to annoy her but really what good is a collander if you don’t have anything to colland I figured.
A total of 7 people asked me why I have a recipe for vegetable soup as my screensaver. 2 people asked if I could send them a copy. Countless others looked at me like I was strange.
I cannot wait for the stats on the Malachai quote.
JD–you’ll have to start a Screensaver Blog with stat counts so we can all keep up.
Usually, the largest stat is the countless others that look at me like I am strange. I do not know if there is any actual correlation between the screensavers and people thinking I am strange.
dammit. My bad.
Note: This post got a bunch of referrals from CBS News, which does that Sphere thing for blog coverage.
I must say there is something quite satisfying about seeing the phrase “Beyond Electric Boogaloo” on a page at CBS News.
It’s so… Tiffany.
Karl – If you could make the phrase “freaky heehawing little Malachai’s” show up in the MSM, then you would be onto something.
– Tiffany Karl…. Isn’t that getting a tad close to media pooftiness?
Whoa whoa whow…now hang on here…I’m one of those “God bothering nazis” and Huck sure as HELL ain’t one of my own.
“Huckster” doen’t speak for me in any way, nor does he speak for anyone in my circle. Religiosity is all fine and good IN IT’S PLACE??…But he’s gone overboard pandering to the religious(please explain to me what this entails exactly?) right
In summation? GO FRED!!!