Beldar's quick takes on the Iowa caucuses results

First take: Mike Huckabee, referring not very obliquely to Mitt Romney, in the single most brutal, deft, and insincere negative campaigning one-liner of the 2008 GOP presidential primaries:

On "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" Wednesday night, Huckabee said that voters are looking for a presidential candidate who "reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off."

"Insincere" because this is the same Mike Huckabee who insists that he's not engaged in negative campaigning. (As I write this, I'm listening to him claim on Fox News that he won because Iowa voters rejected Romney's negative ads, and that he wants to be the heir of Ronald Reagan by obeying the 11th Commandment, Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. Seriously.) Of course, all candidates do this to one degree or another, and I'm not suggesting this was a punch below the belt. But it's a wicked punch (in at least a couple of different colloquial uses of the word "wicked") from a man who claims to be very much the opposite of wicked (in any of those senses). And what should be of concern to conservatives worried about Huckabee's basic principles is that it's a very John Edwards-like (i.e., anti-capitalist, class-warfare populist) punch.

Second take: Tonight Barack Obama is a rock star, and for this night at least, everyone who wants to see in him the ghost of John F. Kennedy in 1960 doesn't have to squint too hard. Just like JFK, Obama is charismatic and utterly unqualified to be President. The former's inexperience and reckless foreign policy miscalculations very nearly brought us to a world-wide nuclear Armageddon; will the latter's result in the first radioactive mushroom cloud over an American city?

Third take: In underground bunkers somewhere inside the Beltway, cold-eyed Clintonistas are plotting revenge and marking up anti-Obama negative TV ad scripts to make them even harsher. The Democratic primary is about to become very ugly, with Edwards sniping at Hillary and Hillary clawing at Obama and Obama trying to avoid obvious mistakes.

Fourth take: Pundit Juan Williams, on Fox News, seemed genuinely moved — and genuinely amazed and surprised — that a black candidate had just won decisively in a state with a statistically insignificant minority population. "Historic" is the word he and others used. And it is. The question is, though, what lesson does one draw from it?

If Democrats were genuinely wise, they would draw from it the lesson that overt, deep-seated racism, while far from extinct in America, is no longer the defining wedge issue that Democrats have been deeply invested in for the last five decades. Some number of voters will never vote for Barack Obama because he's black, just like some number will never vote for Hillary Clinton because she's a woman, just like some number will never vote for Joe Lieberman because he's Jewish, just like some number didn't vote for George W. Bush because his accent is from Midland, Texas. But for all of these prejudices, the numbers, nationwide, are in the single-digits. They might decide a close race; they don't disqualify a candidate outright, though.

In fact, the candidate in this year's race who faces a potentially disqualifying prejudice is neither Obama nor Hillary, but Mitt Romney — because there's still a (low) double-digit percentage of Americans who are frightened or repulsed by (mostly because of ignorance about) the Church of Latter Day Saints (a/k/a Mormons). Nevertheless, many Democratis will reflexively continue to accuse Republicans of reflexive racism for at least another decade or two. (And of "liking war." And of wanting to repeal Social Security.)

Fifth take: I'm unsurprised by the GOP results, and as a Thompson supporter, I'm actually moderately encouraged by them.

Huckabee, declared the "big winner," won by a lower percentage than Obama won the Democratic primary, and by a significantly lower percentage than he (Huckabee) was polling three weeks ago. He peaked two weeks ago, and while tonight's win will effectively complete his introduction to GOP primary voters nationwide, my strong conviction is that further exposure to him will continue his slide.

Romney pulled only 1 vote in 4 after spending months and months and millions and millions in Iowa; he regained ground, but then, given his investments of time and money, it's a bad sign for his campaign that he'd lost so much in the first place.

Fred is a movie star, but not a rock star; I think he'd make the best general election candidate, and the best president, but he's far from the best primary election campaigner. His showing was good enough for him to stay in the race, and it's a race in which time is his friend. New Hampshire will continue the GOP muddle, meaning Fred makes it to the Feb. 5 multi-state primaries — when I expect McCain will take a severe beating leading him to drop out of the race, and by when I believe Huckabee's balloon will be fully burst. At that point, it will be a Romney/Guiliani/Thompson three-way fight, the outcome of which may not be clear until just before the convention, if then. Thompson, last to enter the campaign, may by then have become the consensus candidate around whom uncertain and still-nervous Republicans can finally rally.