By Gregor Peter Schmitz in Des Moines, Iowa
While his rivals keep calling up the ghost of illegal immigrants, Huckabee is milder. As governor of Arkansas he made sure children of illegal immigrants were allowed to enter public schools. Things got touchy at the Washington summit when someone asked the former preacher how Jesus would have responded to certain political questions; but Huckabee answered, "Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office." At the same time, ads in Iowa emphasized his appeal to religious voters. "My faith defines me," says Huckabee in one of them.
Naturally, he would have to assemble broader support among Americans to win the White House. In Iowa around 60 percent of Republican caucus-goers on Thursday classified themselves as evangelical Christians. The next early primary state, New Hampshire, is different. Huckabee will need more cash and a more professional team. Among his entourage in Iowa, Internet connections sometimes blinked out. At his miniscule campaign office in Iowa, anyone could watch his coordinator through a window, writing e-mails.
But it's exactly this grassroots charm that brought Huckabee to the front of the Iowa caucuses. The question is, which Republican can stand in his way? Mitt Romney worked the citizens of Iowa like no other candidate, he threw mud at Huckabee -- but people just don't like him. "Romney only has supporters who are unbelievably good-looking or unbelievably rich," is how a TV journalist, Chris Matthews from CNBC, put it. John McCain, the senator from Arizona, was hoping for third place in Iowa, but he was shunted to fourth by the sleepwalking actor and former politician Fred Thompson.
New York's former mayor, Rudy Giuliani, still leads in national polls. But in Iowa he earned less than 1 percent of the vote. Of course, he hardly worked the state at all -- he's concentrating on a "Florida strategy," which would involve a breakout win there on January 29 and follow-up victories in important states like New York and California. But it's based on the gamble that other Republicans will tear each other apart before those primaries and keep a clear leader from emerging -- which often runs counter to US election logic.
Clinton Outclassed
Iowa, of course, has also buoyed Obama. In spite of the giant Clinton machine, Obama has now established himself as a serious candidate. Like her, he's raised $100 million over the last year, and he's built powerful campaign teams for almost all the other important primary states.
Now he's marked out Hillary's limits. She was considered the shoe-in candidate, and it was likely this sense of inevitability that cost her votes in the end. For some time she seems to have been battling more against Republicans than against her own party rivals. So Obama succeeded in painting Clinton as part of the system that Americans wanted to move beyond. Here the young sunshine boy, there the old establishment.
After the votes came in at the Clinton camp, she appeared before 1,000 cheering fans, including party heavy-hitters like Madeleine Albright, her husband Bill, her daughter Chelsea. Hillary spoke softly, did not stumble once. She tried to convert her own setback into a win for the Democrats.
But her husband's role in the Iowa campaign only contributed to the establishment image that Obama has tried to draw. Clinton seemed to speak more about his own legacy than about his wife; he seemed to believe that Democrats owed her the nomination.
As the Clintons at last started to see that their approach was missing the mark, they changed the candidate's message. Sometimes Hillary was a hard leader who was tough on terrorism. Sometimes she played the experienced diplomat. But for the past few weeks there have been videos of her with her mother and friends, which is supposed to show viewers what a good friend and nice person she is.
Arguably, the mood began to change during a televised debate at the end of October in Philadelphia. Obama had long been trying to close ranks on Clinton. No one believed he could mount a serious attack, so he summoned some New York Times reporters and promised to change things. Obama, it turns out, really didn't have to be aggressive; Clinton would get herself into trouble. On the harmless question of whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to obtain drivers' licenses, she flip-flopped. Obama simply said: "If I'm not mistaken, Hillary just said two different things within two minutes."
Change vs. Experience
Since then Obama has not let go of this advantage. Change versus experience -- a trip to the past or hope for a new beginning. This time, "hope" has won. Peter Hart, the famed Democratic opinion pollster, asked party voters in December: If politics in Washington were a book, would you just want a few new pages or a whole new chapter? Nearly half wanted an entirely different book.
The thee-way fight among the Democrats will go on for a while -- at least until Super Tuesday, on February 5, when 20 states vote. For Edwards, who concentrated most of his money on Iowa, second place might mean the end of his candidacy, especially considering his distance behind Obama. Clinton, though, has to do what her husband did in New Hampshire in 1992 as "the comeback kid." Don't underestimate the Clintons in this respect, particularly now that Obama will have to face a new level of scrutiny in the media. But the self-confident Clinton strategy will have to be retooled.
Mike Huckabee has already announced a new tactic of his own. On Wednesday night he appeared on Jay Leno's talk show. When asked which Democratic candidate he would most like to run against, he answer was typical Huckabee: "I'd like it best if they would all just give up."
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