January 04, 2008
WH '08: A Brusque, But Not Brisk, Farewell To Iowa
We haven't matched the rest of the media's outsized coverage of the Iowa caucuses because of the very nature of the caucuses themselves. But we have to admit that what we saw last night was pretty astonishing, in part because a poll predicting the results actually turned out to be right.
Of course, that could just be a coincidence, but the Des Moines Register appears to have corrected for some of the factors that plagued surveys past. (Though it's still not without its problems, Mark Blumenthal points out.) The David-vs.-Goliath victory of Mike Huckabee (results) flew in the face of conventional wisdom, proving that a virtual unknown with hardly any money to campaign with and virtually no organization could sell himself to voters.
Huck's defeat of Mitt Romney does not, however, mean that the conventional wisdom won't prevail.
If you know anything about how the caucuses work, you know that they are unrepresentative of party voters nationwide and are undemocratic, particularly on the Democratic side (irony, irony), to boot. So of course all the attention now goes to New Hampshire (but not Wyoming, which holds its GOP caucus tomorrow), for the first primary vote of the season. New Hampshire's results will almost certainly be different from Iowa's, so a lot of comparing and contrasting will ensue.
We purposely did not devote a lot of blog space to the caucuses for good reason. But yesterday's surprising results dispelled some long-standing prognostication about the 2008 presidential election. Since dispensing with conventional wisdom can be fun (OK, we're nerds), let's take out the trash after the jump.
Evangelical voters turned out en masse last night in a cycle that seemed all but lost to that bloc. What happened?
The Huck media surge is what happened. Last summer, political insiders were scratching their heads over why Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, John McCain, a war hero and go-to guy on defense, and Joseph Biden, a foreign-policy expert, weren't faring better. Part of the reason was that self-feeding mechanism whereby candidates who are widely known tend to poll well, but also the political press only pays attention to candidates who poll well.
Huckabee was able to break out of the lower-tier pack by taking advantage of a restless Republican base that wasn't too familiar with him (yet) and a press corps that loves a dramatic background story and charm. A good TV ad debut seemed to solidify the seriousness of the threat he posed to Romney.
About 60 percent of the Republicans who showed up to caucus self-identified as evangelicals. But AP's entrance numbers show that a slight majority of those voters did not caucus for Huck. So how to explain his win?
Anti-Romney sentiment plus economic concerns. The Farm Belt is ripe territory for economic populism, a truism that John Edwards tried and failed to fully capitalize on. Some surveys show voters are now more worried about pocketbook issues than Iraq. Romney is admired for his success as a consultant, but the son of an auto exec-cum-millionaire can't claim to feel the little guy's pain. Huck, from humble Hope, Ark., can and frequently does.
Iowans also punished Romney for blanketing the airwaves with attack ads, and part of what failed him was strategy. Says "Grassroots Rules" author Christopher Hull, "Romney's problem, and the problem of this vast swath of moderates in the race, was that they were unable to mobilize rural voters who were not Christians, and they were unable to mobilize their core constituencies."
Romney was also unable to convince Iowa Republicans that his conversion from a relatively liberal Republican to a stringent fiscal and social-issues conservative was genuine. "It simply didn't wash with activists," Hull said.
Losing Iowa is no doubt a blow to Romney's campaign. There will be some embarrassment over how much time and money he spent there only to lose a race that just two months ago was in his pocket. But he's still poised to win the nomination.
The reason being that caucus-goers tend to live on the extremes of both parties. Religion has been a big theme of the GOP race, but that's mostly been because the Iowa GOP has more white evangelicals than, say, New Hampshire. (Plus there was the intense fascination with Romney's Mormon faith, for better or for worse.)
Clearly, Huckabee's win shows he's filling a void among evangelical voters. But is that enough to put him over for the nomination?
So far, it appears not. The moderate, libertarian-streaked Republicans and independents of New Hampshire are not likely to go for Huckabee. Huck needs to start pulling in donations fast, but the big checks for the GOP usually come from big business interests. Huckabee's populism and record of raising taxes as Arkansas governor may doom him in later states.
So the Iowa caucuses may be more significant for who lost, rather than who won. Romney will endure some negative headlines between now and the primary on Tuesday, which is to the benefit of his biggest competition there, John McCain. Armed with a bucketful of endorsements, McCain will seize on the perception that Romney tried and failed to buy Iowa voters. If he does well enough, the next day's headlines are all about him.
The question there is whether McCain can squeak past the angry blocs of Republican voters who begrudge him his moderation and leadership on campaign finance reform to get to the general, where national polls show he'd perform well. GOP voters are more fractured (and unhappy) this cycle than they have been in recent memory. Huckabee may be the most likable in this slate, which Iowa seemed to demonstrate yesterday, but the smart money is still on Romney, because the Republicans who are peeling themselves off the floor in time to get to the polls are doing so out of a desire to beat the Democrats -- not out of great enthusiasm for the candidates.
Which brings us to yesterday's Democratic victor, Barack Obama (results). His party can't afford to lose three winnable presidential contests in a row, so the conventional wisdom in this contest is that Democratic voters will vote with their heads and not their hearts. Obama bucked that yesterday. That CW may also ultimately prevail, but it is pretty remarkable that Democratic Iowa caucus-goers, who have in the past taken electability into account, favored the unknown quantity of Obama versus the more-established known quantity of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"I don't know if there's a drive to find the most electable candidate. I don't think that's going on," Hull said. "I think that what they are looking for is a wave of fresh air to blow over the fetid swamp of Washington, D.C."
Fragrant language aside, Hull's observation comports with what is now a cyclical trend in American politics: every few years the public decides it really, really hates Washington. Like, more than usual.
Thanks to President Bush, the war (without end) in Iraq and a constantly deadlocked Congress, that is definitely the case. Headlines have been bleating that this is a "change vs. experience" election, but that is largely because it's easier for the media to explain things in binary terms. The reality is of course more complicated, and Obama's and Huckabee's wins yesterday may indicate that voters are so unhappy with the status quo that they are willing to take risks -- at the possible expense of their party come November -- in an effort to turn things around.
"We've had 16 straight years of trench partisan warfare in Washington, and I think the country's sick of it. I heard the two speeches last night from Obama and from Huckabee, and they were remarkably similar. With the same words!" Hull observed.
"They both said we're here to bring change. They both said we're here to bring a new kind of politics. They both said we need to transform the way we think about our democracy from the battles of the past to bring people together in the future," Hull continued. (Watch both victory speeches here.)
If that is truly the case, then even GOP voters may be willing to overlook Huckabee's less-than-pure economic record. Democrats, in turn, may allow themselves to buy into the inspiration and hopefulness of Obama's rhetoric.
For their own reasons, Democratic and Republican voters are deeply restless and unhappy. The caucuses aren't significant enough to upend those contests, as some headlines contend. But the results may give even the most cynical campaign-watchers reason to brace for loads of surprises ahead.
We'll be liveblogging the FOX News GOP candidates forum Sunday night, and will also go up with a postgame assessment of Saturday's back-to-back GOP and Dem debates then.
Posted at 5:51 PM
Posted to:
Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Campaigns, Democrats, Economy, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Iraq, John Edwards, John McCain, Joseph Biden, Middle East, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, President Bush, Republicans, WH 2008
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