Cockeyed Hawkeye Cauci

Whew.  Now that I can breathe again (a highly temporary reprieve at my crucible of employment, believe me), please allow me to do my pontification on the results of the Iowa Caucuses that everybody else in the blogosphere did last night or this morning.  (In fact, I might have managed to get it in this morning, except I had to cut things short because I needed to take a shower, which I never did because my wife ran a load of laundry and washed her hair, and we've had problems with our water heater for years and our bathroom plumbing for months, and sticking my head, much less the rest of me, under that focused sleet beam would have made it colder than Ted Williams', and in January when I have to go outside immediately thereafter, that is a very, very bad combination).

So what's the most important thing to knock off first?  What else?  How close to the pin was I?

Well, I didn't actually make predictions per se, but I did have my polling composites.  Here's how they stacked up versus the actual results:

GOP composite: Huckabee 30.4%, Romney 26.5%, Thompson 11.5%, McCain 10.5%, Giuliani 6.6%

GOP results: Huckabee 34.2%, Romney 25.3%, Thompson 13.4%, McCain 13.1%, Giuliani 3.5%

Alarmingly, Darth Queeg posted the best result verus the composite, exceeding his by 24.8% (2.6 percentage points over 10.5), which can't help but help him going into New Hampshire next Tuesday.  Ready Freddie did 16.5% better than his composite number, grabbing a third place finish that enables him to stick around for a while longer and provide more time for voters to come to their senses.  Even more alarmingly (in addition to winning), Huckles, who is kind of a cross between Elmer Gantry, William Jennings Bryan, and Richard Simmons, exceeded his expectations by 12.5%.  In terms of post-caucus spin, they are the Republican winners.

On the down side, Rudy was a whopping 46.9% short of his composite, but he never seriously contested Iowa.  It's the Mittster who is the huge loser, having spent the past year building a huge organization and expending millions of dollars on the specific strategy of winning the first two "bellweather" states as a means of establishing himself as the perceived Republican frontrunner.  To have been passed at the finish line is, as I have commented often over the past few months, hardly surprising; once Romney built a big lead in Iowa so far in advance, he really did have nowhere to go but down.  But to have been passed by a comparatively pauperized, free enterprise-bashing, tax-raising, criminal-coddling, immigration-amnestizing, anti-war agitating RINO, even if the Huckster was from only two states away, has got to be turning Romneylan stomachs.  How bad is it?  Their praetor was about as subdued as he ever gets when in campaign mode.  At least last night, anyway

Of course, it's not exactly whetting my appetite either, but I've had six weeks or so to grow accustomed to the ongoing quesiness of seeing the Reagan coalition inexorably unravel.  I wouldn't have been thrilled with Romney leading the way, mainly because I don't think he can beat Senator Clinton.  But I could have lived with it in a similar fashion to how I made the best of the cadaverous Bob Dole effort twelve years ago.  But Huckles?  Sorry, I'd sooner vote for good ol' Pat Robertson, who is also a man of the cloth but is actually conservative in areas other than "keep[ing] that thing in your pants," as my dear old mom used to tell me in my youth, and knows at least as much about foreign policy.

Will the Rev'rund roll to the nomination with Iowa as the rocket pack in his ass?  Most experts are doubting it.  He's simply got too narrow a constituency base, so the thinking goes, to take the unique appeal he had in a state notorious for its affinity for "populist" bombast and take it national.  Speaking as a self-styled expert, and trying manfully to leave my creeping pessimism out of the equation, I am compelled to stick with the numbers.  And they show Huck a non-factor in New Hampshire, competitive in Michigan, Nevada, and Florida, and leading in South Carolina.  I don't think you can say that he's got an inside track to the nomination, but he's going to be at least a frontrunner for the next month.

Speaking of New Hampshire, here is my most up-to-date composite:

McCain 31.0%, Romney 29.8%, Giuliani 9.8%, Huckabee 9.8%, Thompson 2.2%

If there is anybody in this race whose success I want to see less than Mike f'ing Hulkaburger's, it's John f'ing McCain's.  And whereas I can understand where Huckles' appeal came from, even though I'm appalled by it, the Chancellor's rise ANYwhere, even the state he won eight years ago, is utterly baffling to me.  Even his appeal to "independents," who shouldn't be allowed to vote in party primaries under any circumstances anyway, doesn't explain it.  Why would Granite state 'Pubbies turn to a backstabber like Darth Queeg, a man who has taken gleeful revenge against his party for the unpardonable affront of nominating George W. Bush in 2000 by shiving his own side in the Senate at every available opportunity?  I can see how they may have tired of Romney after having a calender year full of him, but why would they not jump to Rudy?  Isn't his particular combination of issues stances (socially liberal, more or less fiscally and national security-ly conservative) at least as in tune to the sort of voter that McCain is trying to attract, without all the "maverick" baggage?  And doesn't Rudy have more of a "home field advantage" to boot?

I may be a self-styled expert, but I haven't a clue as to why the first two "bellweather" states would pick the two most left-wing, untrustworthy, and unelectable candidates in the GOP field.  But I will say this: Rudy Giuliani is the beneficiary.  Why?  Because if Mitt Romney loses New Hampshire as he did Iowa, his entire nomination strategy goes up in flames.  And Rudy's, predicated upon skipping the early but comparatively small contests in favor of concentrating on the big states (Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, New York), most of them winner-take-all, with a wealth of delegates, will be vindicated.  It would, ironically, be the downside of Double-H's "It's a two-man race" mantra, in that it would become pretty much a one-man race, with Huck and the Sith Master having taken out Romney and leaving Rudy an open field to Minneapolis.

Of course, on the other hand, maybe Huck catches enough fire to knock off Rudy in Michigan and Florida and battle him clear through the spring.  Which is actually probably a worse outcome than if it had come down to Rudy and Mitt.  As a "Fred Thompson enthusiast", I'm still praying for miracles that will keep me interested in more than just a dispassionate analytical sense.

Perhaps that should read "a negatively passionate analytical sense," although that has its own unique appeal.

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There was a contest on the Democrat side, with a whole lotta manufactured suspense and angst.  But let's get the important stuff out of the way first:

Donk Composite: Obama 28.7%, Rodham 28.6%, Edwards 26.0%

Donk Results: Obama 37.6%, Edwards 29.8%, Rodham 29.5%

My goodness, but the right side of the blogosphere is all a-twitter over this outcome.  Hillary not only didn't win, but she came in third!  So much for "inevitabiliy"! (Yes, the other side of the aisle is not without its own twittering, to say nothing of twits).

However, I am constrained to point out a few things:

1) Obama's eight-point victory margin translated into one more delegate than the Empress garnered (sixteen to her fifteen and Opie's fourteen) due to the Dems' arcane and undisclosed delegate allocation process.  Which makes Obama's win somewhat akin to the visiting team blowing out the home team in game one of a best-of-seven series; yes, it's a big win, and might get you some momentum, but in the end it still counts as only one victory.  And in this case, not even that much.

2) The New England Patriots are going to go 19-0 this season and, of course, win the SuperBowl.  But if they had lost to, say, the Indianapolis Colts or the New York Giants (regular season games the Pats barely won), would they receive a smaller Vince Lombardi trophy at season's end?  Would they not still be the World Champs?  In the same way, who ever conflated "inevitability" with going undefeated?  This is just grist for the Enemy Media to roll the "Comeback Kid" meme out of well-earned mothballs when the Clinton Machine methodically pounds the Illinois upstart into the ground (the ambulance-chaser's campaign won't make it across the Iowa state line).

3) Mrs. Clinton leads by six in New Hampshire, two in South Carolina, and double-digits everywhere else.  Maybe "Barack Obama enthusiasts" see slaying the Hilldebeast on the plains of Iowa as an engraved invitation to Inaugural balls in a year's time, but I need to see the Generalissimo kick the hag's ample posterior repeatedly for the next month before I'll take this "upset" business seriously.

~  ~  ~

So, when all's said and done - and that's still at least a month away - the only justifiable sorrow-drowners are the Romneylans, for whose candidate Iowa proved to be midnight and the candidate himself an overcapitalized pumpkin.  Huckles and "Sailor" are blocking for America's Mayor, who will meet his doom in ten short months at the hands of the modern-day Jezebel.

There is a way out of this looming nightmare.  His name is Fred Thompson.  If only enough Pachyderms can locate their "inner Gipper" before it's too late.