The Iowa Primary: An Embarrassment of Riches for Democrats

By now, the entire world knows Barack Obama won the Democratic nod and Mike Huckabee won on the GOP side.

Big Sis called me early last night and we made bets about each side. The one who correctly guessed the winner of the Democratic side got a free dinner and for the GOP side the winner got a free breakfast.
Now she owes me a free breakfast and dinner!

I watched CNN until late last night so I could hear the top three Democrats' speeches.
I'm happy to say I liked what all three had to say.

-Edwards is good because he hates corporate greed and knows how to torture those bastards in the corner offices. Tax incentives for outsourcing jobs will be gone if he wins. He wants the war in Iraq to end. Plus he's cute, white and male, so he can pull votes from the undecided and superficial.
-Obama is good because he never voted for that fucking Iraqi war and he'd pull out the troops immediately.
Plus he won in one of the whitest states in the nation, which demonstrates his charismatic nature.
-Hillary is good for reasons I've already mentioned in an earlier post.

Any of them could win the Presidency and I'd be thrilled.

As for Huckabee, he won in a conservative state where religiosity is considered a necessity for GOP voters when considering a candidate.
They didn't vote for Romney because conservative Christians recognize Mormonism as a cult, which it is and always has been. Romney is too slick, too rich and too Bushy to have captured the hearts of Iowans.

I listened to Huckabee's victory speech.
First, the shadow of Chuck Norris behind him on the podium reminded me how much Norris resembles Danny Bonaduce. How unfortunate for both of them.
Huckabee seems like a simple, plain spoken, nice guy. He's definitely not cut from the same cloth as the rest of the GOP contenders.
That's what will hurt him.
The Republicans eat their own, and the monied ones like Romney and Giuliani will cast Huckabee as just another Gomer from Hope, Arkansas. They will vilify him and turn him into some kind of anti-Christ monster before all is said and done.
He's their worst nightmare; an evangelical who will get the votes Bush got when he pretended to be born-again. The GOP panders to right-wing religious wing-nuts and now they have one running for president.
Delicious poetic justice.

New Hampshire will tell a different story.
There's less religiosity, more liberals and more sophistication than in Iowa.
I've been to New Hampshire, however, and I was struck by its rural nature. It's not Boston sophisticated, but like all of New England, it is a population of politically savvy voters who listen carefully to primary candidates.
I wouldn't underestimate the power of the Clinton machine in New Hampshire. Hillary was educated in New England and she definitely would be what the Beach Boys would call, "an East Coast girl."

Giuliani and Romney might have a better showing than Huckabee with New Hampshire Republicans because New Englanders are not high on Southern corn pone preachers. They like Yankees, period.

As I have said repeatedly, the Republicans do not have even one candidate who can appeal to GOP voters across the board. They all have at least a few fatal flaws, Bush being a Republican being the worst.

I think it's safe to say change is coming and it doesn't look like the Republicans have anyone who can distance himself enough from Bush and his vanity war to get elected. People are tired of that shit, and I think come November we'll see that in the polls.