First Iowa, Then the World!

Victory! We win! In Iowa! A triumph for, um, somebody! The results of the caucus in Iowa are in, but what they mean is hard to say.

Some Republicans friends are insisting it’s an enormous victory for McCain, who skipped Iowa and thus wasn’t damaged there, while his clearest rivals, Romney and Thompson, emerge with injured reputations. Others are proclaiming that it means Giuliani has succeeded in his plan to let the social-conservative candidates split the early primaries and then sweep in on Super Tuesday to take all the major delegate slates.

Hardly anyone appears to take seriously the first apparent fact—that Huckabee has just won delegates to the Republican convention. Partly that’s because no one can imagine him winning a general election, and partly that’s because no one can imagine him winning New Hampshire in the next primary (which means any momentum he has from Iowa is immediately thwarted). But I’m not so sure. He can carry Texas and some other states and arrive at the Republican convention with a serious block of votes.

That is, of course, if the Republicans get no consensus candidate before the national convention. Let’s hope that’s not going to happen. The last thing we need is several additional months of this kind of campaigning.