Dews Caucus thoughts...

Well it has finally come and gone...

The long awaited test for Clinton/Obama/Edwards/Others and their partners Romney/Giuliani/Huckabee/McCain/Paul in Iowa has come and gone with yours truly watching (quite amused for the most part) from our very own command center in Capitol Hill (complete with 42 and 50 inch behemoth HD TV's).

Immediate thoughts are that I was not at all surprised about Huckabee's running away with the GOP side, as they kept mentioning over and over about the power of evangelical influence in the caucus that year. That being said, it was surprising to see Fred Thompson garner so much support when he had mentioned as recently as yesterday that he wanted to help support his friend McCain if he could not secure a good finish (consequently he had beaten McCain based on the last numbers I saw).

Obama's clear victory was honestly a surprise though.

From the early returns I got the sense that Edwards may have finally gotten that traction he's needed, but eventually did lose ground, though a second place finish for him in Iowa is damaging it may not be the end of the road.

The real clear loser in this was Hillary Clinton...

Not really sure where this puts her in the grand scheme of things, as she obviously hasn't shown as much ability as Obama in the fundraising, nor the "charm" aspect, so honestly I'm ready to write her off at this point as a serious candidate...

She needed to win Iowa to prove their was something there I feel... She didn't do it... Her speech was the most telling part of her entire failure when she was preaching progress and a change in direction while surrounding herself with Washington insiders that everyone would recognize (including that unemployed husband of hers, whats his name?).

Anyway...

My picks for New Hampshire for the moment are Obama and (wait for it....) a close finish between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney!

You laugh, but just wait...

Today in Iowa

I found this picture over at White Noise Insanity and it pretty much sums up the events in Iowa today.

Amazing developments...

Don't look now ladies and gentlemen, but we've got ourselves a whole new race in the GOP primary!

Latest numbers from a Rasmussen report show none other then Governor Huckabee taking the lead in Iowa over well kept, reserved, mormon Governor Mitt Romney!

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the Iowa caucus finds former
Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee with 28% of the vote, former Massachusetts
Governor Mitt Romney with 25% support, and everyone else far behind. National
frontrunner Rudy Giuliani gets just 12% of the vote in Iowa at this time while
former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson is the only other candidate in double
digits at 11%.

Really is a pretty shocking turn of events as Huckabee has truly come on strong recently as his visibility seems to go up by the week. He certainly has distinguished his views and his persona from the rest of the crowd at this point, but maybe this is a sign of the GOP electorate wanting someone that won't base all their responses off the latest polls?

Should be an interesting race to watch now...

Especially for our good friend that will hook us all up if he wins the Presidency :).

Well played, waitress

The NYT Online posted a kinda-interesting article about the presidential campaigns rolling out rapid-response web sites to provide fact checking and rebut stories the campaigns deem offensive or inaccurate. Hillary Clinton's campaign has used it in relation to a story saying that she didn't leave a tip at an Iowa restaurant. Apparently this web site was deployed to counter the notion that Hillary is a cheapskate.

But that's not the best part of the story.

The best part of this article is waitress Anita Esterday's quote at the end: "There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip." I hope, really, really hope that there are a lot of Iowans like Ms. Esterday. The folks in Iowa and New Hampshire have the pleasure of more or less choosing the Presidential nominees. As this article shows, instead of the war, the economy, energy, the environment, and a pile of other important issues, our candidates are worried about, well, bullshit. I hope that the rest of Iowa is as good as Ms. Esterday about separating the wheat from the chaff in this election season.