The Evangelic vote benefited Thompson. In New Hampshire, the Evangelical political presence is small compared with Iowa. Consequently, we are going to see different dynamics play out there.

Ron Paul supporters are very loyal, and will not alter their vote during the primary season. Many Ron Paul supporters, however, in a general election would vote for Obama against Huckebee, but they would NEVER vote for Clinton. Consequently, if Clinton is the demo's nominee, I foresee an EXTREMELY divided America.

Plenty of Christians didn't vote for Huckabee

Certainly.

and plenty of secularists did.

Not so much. From the exit polling, 60% of R caucus voters self identified as born again or evangelical Christian, of those 46% voted for the Huckster. That makes 27.6% of his 34%, or ~81% of his support, came from self identified evangelicals and born agains. Of the 36% of voters who said religious beliefs of the candidate matter a great deal, 56% voted for Huckabee. That is nearly 60% of his support and I would bet a considerable overlap with the earlier question.

The attempted racism parallel is just silly.

Huckabee wins in Iowa and the faithless fear mongers cough up a hyperbolic cacophony of wailing and gnashing.
"THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD!"
This sort of bigoted stereotyping is no less virulent because it has turned it's ugly eye away from race and is now focused on religion.
It is innuendo and implication drawn from the same playbook as used by it's racist predecessors.
Plenty of Christians didn't vote for Huckabee and plenty of secularists did.
Surely if the man has a bad political platform, it alone should yield ample cause for criticism!
Judge the man on this platform and stop the bigoted marginalization.

I think McCain is one of the few candidates that religious conservatives would be comfortable with if Huckabee doesn't get the nomination-he has definitely stepped on their toes at times, but this go around, he seems to realize he needs them, and hasn't been burning too many bridges.

I am not convinced religious conservatives would get off the bus wholesale, if Huckabee is rejected, but I bet a lot of them do, especially if that rejection is a nastyer intraparty one, and the eventually nominee has some very dirty hands.

I think my concern if the GOP nominates a lackluster candidate or one the party members can't get passionate about is that it will hurt the candidacy of several very good senators and congressmen up for election. My own GOP senator is going to be in a tight race, and turn out will have a big influence on whether or not he survives, and his loss would be a huge loss to the GOP senate.

The religious conservatives will see [Huckabee's not being nominated] as saying that they will never be given their proper due by the Republicans, and stay at home or be susceptible to a third party.

I agree with Dan on this. I think that after 30+ years of Republican courtship, religious conservatives would take this as relegation to the back of the bus, and I think they'd just flat get off the bus.

I'm not sure that's right. The differences between the top-tier Democratic candidates are ones of style and method rather than ones of policy. Clinton believes in a Fordist approach; Edwards is confrontational; Obama is reconciling. I don't think those differences are easily convertible. Particularly, I don't think that Edwards or Obama supporters would support a Clinton candidacy with the sort of fervor they have for their preferred candidate and, if Democrats are to secure a victory in 2008, it will depend on turnout.

I'm not sure we're watching the same primary, Dave. By and large the democrats are consistently happy with their choices. it is the republicans that are bitterly divided with all of their candidates sporting a health slice of the base who *refuse* under any circumstances to vote for them.

It's gotten so bad that Redstate routinely has "who would you NOT vote for threads" just to keep track of who all refuses to vote for which candidate.

Now maybe this will all die down and the various coalition elements of the GOP will cease saber rattling, but at the moment they are way *way* more divided than the dems.

Andrew Sullivan sounds the most optimistic note...

...

So, it’s Morning in America. But, as his co-blogger Andrew Sullivan noted just minutes earlier, it’s a dark day for the Republican Party.

Okay, I laughed out loud at that one.

As far as the presidential election being close, I doubt it very much. The GOP has a lot going against them. They are way down in terms of money , have a lot more races to cover with less cash, their coalition is being badly battered by the irreconcilable desires o the different factions. On top of that you have a severely battered "brand" and demographics (i.e. party identification) working against them.

It's damn near a perfect storm.

Oh add to that that the GOP is currently riding a lull in the violence in Iraq. They've tied themselve closely to the surge, but the surge is about to end and it accomplished nothing but tamping down the violence to 2005 levels for a few months. With the reduction in troops and the government promising to try and disarm the Sunni bands we just armed things are going to be very bad in 2008 for the Neocons.

Barring some serious fraud, which I suppose you can't rule out, I can't see 2008 presidential election being anywhere near close.

Thompson or possibly McCain could pull it off, if they tread very carefully. But a nasty fight to get the rest of the party behind one nominee, especially if done by very public scare tactics about Huckabee, could doom the Republicans to a below 40% share, as well.

McCain, at least, has been very gracious toward Huckabee and his supporters. McCain's not an evangelical and generally doesn't pretend otherwise but he recognizes their importance as part of the coalition.

So what does it all mean? Certainly it is easy to overstate the importance of this one caucus. But the field is thinning and it will become even clearer next week after a real primary....

I will disagree. If the method of getting the rest of the Republicans to rally around someone else is for the party establishment to make dire predictions of how Huckabee is not a suitable mainstream candidate for the Republicans (see for example Peggy Noonan's WSJ piece from a few weeks ago), there is a significant danger that the Republican coalition will simply not coalesce.

The religious conservatives will see this as saying that they will never be given their proper due by the Republicans, and stay at home or be susceptible to a third party. And this goes double if the eventual nominee is Romney or Giuliani, who have records of being very far from the Republican mainstream, especially on the issues the religious conservatives care about. Thompson or possibly McCain could pull it off, if they tread very carefully. But a nasty fight to get the rest of the party behind one nominee, especially if done by very public scare tactics about Huckabee, could doom the Republicans to a below 40% share, as well.

Somewhere in between lies the truth.

I dunno, James. I think Andrew Sullivan and his coblogger are capable of taking opposite points of view and still failing to bracket the truth.

And that's important because it's easier to turn a like for Edwards into a like for Obama or even Clinton, than it is to turn a dislike for Romney into a like for Romney.

I'm not sure that's right. The differences between the top-tier Democratic candidates are ones of style and method rather than ones of policy. Clinton believes in a Fordist approach; Edwards is confrontational; Obama is reconciling. I don't think those differences are easily convertible. Particularly, I don't think that Edwards or Obama supporters would support a Clinton candidacy with the sort of fervor they have for their preferred candidate and, if Democrats are to secure a victory in 2008, it will depend on turnout.

Sure. I'm not sure there's much evidence for those Ifs, however. The Democratic base is certainly more excited than the Republican base at this stage. I'm not sure that will matter come November, though.

I do think that Obama would be a more formidable general election candidate than HRC, since he's less alienating. But so long as Huckabee isn't the nominee, I think it'll be another close election.

Maybe not to the same degree, but it certainly seems that turning out Dem voters is going to be easier than turning our GOP voters. If I were GOP strategists, I would be pushing local candidates _hard_, and hope that people come out to vote for them, and just vote for the GOP Presidential candidate while they're at it.

The difference seems to be that the Democratic party is split people people have very strong likes for their favorite candidate. The only GOP voters I've seen who have a strong like for their candidate are Ron Paul supporters, everyone else just likes the other candidates less than they like theirs. And that's important because it's easier to turn a like for Edwards into a like for Obama or even Clinton, than it is to turn a dislike for Romney into a like for Romney.