No Runny Eggs

There’s a certain dearth of pro-Huckabee blogs on my roll and reader (no, that’s not by design; most of the blogs there got there long before the primary season started a year ago, and I didn’t drop anybody because of who they supported), as well as a dearth of Democratic ones (that’s by design) so this is not likely going to be pretty. Let’s roll with those that didn’t simply choose to drink the night away (and see if I can inflate the TTLB ranking of some good blogs):

– Jack M is rooting for a brokered convention.
– Kate, in a common theme, wonders, “(W)hat the hell are those Iowans smoking anyway?”
– Gaius calls it unhappy returns for both Clinton and Romney/McCain (the latter is an unusual call).
– Trail-Mix has a long, laundry list on both sides of the aisle.
– Sinistar is doubling down on Fred. (side note; I agree; let it ride)
– Swint is blaming Mormon bigotry and spinning madly for Mitt
– Ed Driscoll has a two-parter: “A Mormon in the Dog House?” and Obama’s victory over both Clinton and the Jackson/Sharpton wing of the party
– The Fred folks won a ticket to the next dance.
– Mary has the triple play – Obama in the racial time warp, a warning for the Huck-a-Soldiers that not everybody is like Iowa, and Smilex for Clinton.
– Elliot declares Obama the Dem king, but isn’t ready to hand over the Pubbie crown to Huckabee.
– Bruce recaps his radio show with the obvious; Obama and Huck win big, Clinton and Romney lose big.
– HeatherRadish tried to stay awake to avoid being eaten by her cat, got embarrassed by the Huck-A-Iowans.
– The Headless One thinks the unthinkable nightmare scenario; Obama v Huckabee v Paul v Bloomberg.
– Allahpundit asks whether we can dance on Hillary’s grave (answer; not yet; we need that race alive long enough to sort out our own problems without having the “false-flag” Paul-Nuts really deliver a SNAFU package).
– Bryan asks, “What now?” (Well, Clinton’s going to go grab a pair of pliers and a blow torch)
– Jib continues the common theme and asks, “Really, Iowa?”
– Brian of Liberty Pundit has a lengthy view that I can’t do justice in a few short words.
– Jim Lynch says it went as expected.
– Jessica McBride has a bullet-point review.
– Michelle Malkin focuses on some of the eclectic – Duncan soldiering on despite a 1% showing (makes sense; he used the ignore-Iowa strategy, and his campaign is more to raise awareness than anything else), unions losing (again), and asking whether the LeftStreamMedia will stop race-based fear-mongering (short answer, upon Obama’s numerical inevitability as the nominee and not a moment later).
– Dean continues the theme of the night/morning, “Anybody but that goob,” and warns there is one last gasp out of the Clinton Slime Machine for Obama.
– Gopfolk may be wrong and he may be right (wasn’t that a song?)
– Peggy Noonan says, “Out with the old, in with the new.” (I would’ve went with the “bold” from the old Miller Brewing commercial; Obama and Huckabee aren’t exactly “new” as much as “bold”).
– Bill Bradley says it’s historic.
– Mark McNally says it was Preachers’ Night in Iowa.
– Fred (Dooley, not Thompson) came oh-so-close to using actual swear words to describe Clinton’s reaction (I normally would supply them, but since this mega-link post will likely draw in some traffic and hopefully send out some as well, I won’t here; I probably will repeat them in another post because I can’t get rid of my AoS moron itch).
– Matthew declares winners and losers in the Huck v Mitt battle.
– Jon Ham has a two-parter: he asks how a black guy can beat a white woman and a white man in a state that’s 90% white, and points out Chuck Grassley’s idiotic defense of the caucii.
– John Hawkins does a lengthy “What now?”
– Silent E has a unique way to state the obvious.
– Slublog’s at stage 2 of grief, and has used his anger to become a late-blooming FredHead. He’s also fearful of the coming split, which explains the bloom.
– Kathy Carpenter is almost alone in saying there were no surprises.
– Teresa does the wrap in pics.
– Peter has a 2-parter – who’s left to stop the Huckster except Fred (along with F-bombs and flying ashtrays from Clinton), and Huck’s the man with the glass jaw (er, at this point, it’s Romney with the shattered glass jaw)
– Asian Badger continues the theme of the night/morning with “Huckabee, Schmuckabee”.
– Jim Geraghty has Master Rove’s review (dammit; I missed Jim’s on CNN; anybody have video?)
– RAG rejoices that skin color is no longer a barrier to victory.
– Mary Katharine has the last-second New Hampshire itinerary for Huckabee (please burn that mo in NH, Mike)
– USCitizen points out that Thompson took 3rd despite the Fox News Blackout.
– Stephen Green punches out an angry open letter to Iowans that starts off with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
– Will Collier takes the Giuliani/Hunter approach to Iowa; it doesn’t matter.
– Zip says, “It don’t mean nothin’, not a thing.”
– James Wigderson sings “Two Tribes” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
– Brian Fraley gives some free professional analysis (pssst, hey Sean, The Markesian Group is available)
– Erick declares war on the Politico, which has declared war on Thompson and congratulates Ron Paul
R&E part 1 (10:17 am 1/4/2008)
– Nick gives this round to Jesus (note to Nick; Giuliani wasn’t competing in Iowa, and he isn’t competing in New Hampshire, so he’s going nowhere).
R&E part 2 (10:44 am 1/4/2008)
– Curt is ready for the South Carolina round.
– I’m horrible at self-promotion, but I may as well point you at my own lack of cognitive consciousness.
R&E part 3 (12:20 pm 1/4/2008)
– William Smith gives a Granite insight into what’s next.
– Just a Grunt offers a $10 commentary for 2¢.
– Eric takes a typical long Tygrrrr look at a Pope and a Hope.

I’ll have more tomorrow after a good night’s sleep, and I may well revise and extend this then, but I won’t let a lack of cognitive consciousness stop me from putting out a few overtired thoughts.

First, on the Democratic side, John Edwards is DONE!!! with a capital E and three exclamation points. Yeah, he took second to Barack Obama, but he needed to both get much closer than 8 percentage points (in delegate-equivalents; the Dems have goofy rules that don’t let vote totals get out) to the lead and more than a half a percentage point ahead of Hillary Clinton. Iowa was his make-or-break state, and he didn’t quite make.

Speaking of Clinton, she is now on life support. I won’t say that race is over, if only because there is enough of the Clinton Slime Machine for one more slime, but if she can’t capture New Hampshire, we will have Dem nominee Barack Obama long before Super-Duper Tuesday, with potentially-frightening consequences for the Republican process.

On the Republican side, almost everybody, including the temporary-cheering section in the media, grossly underestimated the Huck-A-Boom. Mike Huckabee has survived a very heavy round of Hack-A-Huck, mainly by tapping into both the logical conclusion of “compassionate ‘conservatism'” (namely, using the power and full weight of government to force a particular set of values that at best bear a passing semblance to conservatism) and the evangelical factor to destroy the well-(and self-)financed person that exlemplified the “mere” extension of “compassionate ‘conservatism'” and the rest of the field. The problem is the next state, New Hampshire, isn’t exactly evangelical-friendly. However, he’s game to try.

Destroyed best describes Mitt Romney. In the span of 6 weeks, he went from the prohibitive favorite to a 9-point loser despite outspending the competition and flopping from view to view to fit the perceived message, and he’s headed to another state where he’s in unexpected serious trouble. He’s uncomfortably stuck in the middle of the road with the loser toe tag on.

The view on Fred Thompson is very mixed. As I type, he’s holding onto a 0.26-point lead for third with 7% of the precincts left to report. The good news is his original competition in his next competitive state, Romney in South Carolina, is dead in the water, listing, settling, and ablaze, and Thompson is, if barely, the last broad-spectrum conservative relatively unscathed. The bad is New Hampshire lies between the two, and South Carolina is arguably very evangelical-friendly (remember, John McCain’s campaign died there in 2000 immediately after he pissed off the evangelicals).

John McCain lives on to fight another day. Even if he doesn’t come back to take 3rd, he exceeded expectations, which combined with Romney’s fall, will be more than enough to give him New Hampshire again. However, the field is too crowded, and he’s not enough of a media darling to take that and do what he didn’t do in 2000.

Ron Paul is the third surprise. He has the ability to be a very nasty spoiler (with the emphasis on nasty), though beyond helping to finish off Romney in New Hampshire because of his Libertarian background, I do not know who else he will spoil, mainly because there is still barely a Democratic race.

Perhaps the night’s biggest Republican winner is also the night’s second-biggest Republican loser. Despite getting only 3%, Rudy Giuliani has to be happier than a pig in slop over the devastation of Romney. While Huckabee could easily get 2 of the 3 early states that Romney had hoped to sweep, Huckabee’s base is far more dissimilar to Giuliani’s than Romney’s is. That leaves the Giuliani strategy of using the large, socially-liberal states to rack up the delegates pretty much unassaultable directly.

So, what now? To cleanly paraphrase Marcellus Wallace (which means I lose the most-colorful half of the language), let me tell you what now. Thompson has to get a few hard-cases to go to work on the Huck in South Carolina. You hear me talking, Huckleberry boy? We ain’t through with you by a damn sight. We’re gonna get medevial.