RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Never significant now as McCain won. It is never like Obama's win resonating to every state, but we do see that the republican party is vulnerable.

Significant in that it represented the first sounding of the deathknell for Giuliani and Romney, but ultimately irrelevant.

Huckabee doesn't have much of a chance in my view. He doesn't have the money to compete in big states like California, Florida, and New York, which have the delegates needed to win the nomination. His appeal within the party isn't wide enough to secure the nomination either. He has the support of the evangelicals, but they aren't a stand-alone power within the party. In coalition with others like economic conservatives, or foreign policy neo-conservatives, yes they are a power, but not by themselves.

I foresee the GOP rallying around either Romney or McCain. They are the only two with any plausible chance of winning the nomination. Giuliani, as I predicted on this website months ago, will fall to the wayside due to a lack of support. Huckabee will stick around longer, as he might be able to amass enough delegates to become a kingmaker in the nominating process. McCain makes a lot of people within the Party uneasy, primarily because his moderate stances on some key domestic policy issues, but many believe that he gives the party its best shot at winning in November, and I tend to agree. Romney is a good candidate, but he just doesn't connect well with the average voter. I think Romney would make a better president than McCain, as he is very strong grasp of policy issues, but McCain brings electability and familiarity to the table.

The most significant thing about the Iowa caucus is how few Republicans voted in it.

Looks to me like it's the Democrats' turn to rule.

UPDATE:

Some find Huckabee to be not all that unreasonable:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12222007.html

An important event insofar as it may be the clearest manifestation yet of the growing split within the GOP between the traditional fiscal conservatives and the radical Bible-thumpers who have been taking the party by storm lately. The split has been temporarily sutured by the current prez, who is the scion of a corporate merger between generations of wealthy families, but also parades as a born-again Texan. Huckabee does not appear to have many connections to the conservative side of the GOP, which scares many party regulars. If he keeps up his current pace by winning the nomination, Huckabee may create the largest split in a major party since the Democrats lost the Southern vote. And he won't stand much chance of beating the Democratic nominee on the national level -- nonetheless, he has a frightening capacity to make himself sound reasonable ...

His upset victory might be the wake-up call Romney needs in the early going. With 60% of those voting (Iowa republicans) characterizing themselves as evangelicals, how could he lose? Unlike on the democrat side, Iowa republicans are not a microcosm of republicans nationwide. I see Huckabee as a temporarily credible candidate who will probably be off everyone's radar screen before any of the "big states" get a chance to cast their primary votes. Evengelicals are likely to be conservatives but all conservatives are not evangelical, particularly in the larger states. What is a large bloc in Iowa is a footnote nationwide. Any republican candidate who wishes to be elected must (MUST!!!) have passed muster with the CONSERVATIVE bloc, or will face defeat. Period. Compare the campaign of George H. W. Bush to that of his son. Either motivate the conservatives or prepare for a humiliating loss to someone not fit for any national office. We'll all be asking "wait, who won Iowa? " by June.

Again, one state, but was that Chuck Norris there at the victory party!?!?!?

Ditto what I said about Obama's Iowa victory. Although Huckabee's win here might be important if he lands on a VP ticket, because he had a lot less national notoriety than Obama before this came up.

Huckabee is intelligent and not a pretentious man, but I agree with Canada in that Huckabee will, barring divine intervention,fall flat on his face in every state north of DC, and in places like California,places like Minnesota or Wisconsin,and cities such as Chicago. He may do well in the South and parts of the Midwest, but the positions on issues that he brings to the table won't, believe me, fly in the more religious and ethnically diverse states, who have had enough of Bush and even mildly Bush- like figures, and a big mistake that the Christian right often makes is that they either assume that everyone has to think like them, or they think they can mandate their own ideas- yes, Huckabee is polite and different from Bush and rather self- effacing...but even the Archie Bunker types in the places I've mentioned have had enough of the outright fiasco of this administration, the needless war, and the fact that the government we have erodes real democracy more each day.

Significant. . .but redneck Iowans won't save Huckabee from the states who don't really want someone who doesn't believe in evolution and is (once again) trying to backdoor too much theology onto a population that has had quite enough of zealotry running the White House. . .we've heard this song before kids. . .

I remember when I first saw Huckabee. It was on the very liberal Daily Show, and at the time, I couldn't believe that a deep South, social conservative, former Baptist minister would walk into that lion's den.

But a funny thing happened. Huckabee was likable. The crowd liked him. He didn't get rattled. He didn't get preachy. He stated his beliefs, but without any of the "I'm right and you're wrong" aggression of many who fit his profile. And above all, he had a charisma.

In the Iowa Caususes, charisma plays. It's a small state, and politicians can't get away with slick sound bites and TV commercials. It's meet and greet, with a decent percentage of voters actually able to see each candidate live and in person.

I don't know if Huckabee's social conservatism and (somewhat wacky) fiscal ideas are going to play nationally, but the man is charismatic, likable, and seems real. I think those qualities have proven to play well in Iowa.

This is significant but not surprising. Huckabee is a former governor, and governors have seen a lot, done a lot and generally are no dopes. I watched MSNBC on the night of the Iowa Caucuses and I was really amused and somewhat appalled by the arrogance, ignorance, and just plain bias showed towards Huckabee by Mathews, Olberman and some other mopes on the show. Only Howard Fineman and Pat Buchanan showed any sense of balance or style.

We shall see what transpires.