Huckabee’s GOP win leaves McCain’s camp smiling

The entrance polls and early returns showing a decisive victory for Mike Huckabee in Thursday night’s Republican presidential caucuses were cause for cheers from the former Arkansas governor’s longshot campaign. But the cheering from Sen. John McCain’s camp was even louder.

“We’re looking good in Iowa,” said one of McCain’s senior aides. Not that the senator was bragging, finishing far behind Huckabee and Mitt Romney. McCain’s delight was that Romney’s expensive, long-pending plan to pin down the nomination, by sweeping both Iowa and then the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday, was in ruins.

It could not be better for McCain, shown by the polls to be tied with Romney for the lead in New Hampshire. He has been surging, while Romney has been slipping. Huckabee has little support in New Hampshire.

The tiny fraction of Iowa Republicans who actually entered Thursday’s night caucuses were hardly representative of the party at large. According to entrance polls, 60 percent of them identify themselves as evangelicals or born-again Christians (compared with 38 percent who were self-described as being in the “religious right” for the last contested Republican caucuses in Iowa, in 2000).

Once the extraordinary number of evangelical voters in Iowa recognized Huckabee as one of their own, he was home free. The heavy spending by Romney did no good and his heavy-handed attacks on Huckabee probably did a lot of harm.

Huckabee’s Iowa campaign was hardly a work of art, even after taking on veteran political operative Ed Rollins as his national campaign chairman. Huckabee’s caucus eve flight to Los Angeles to cross picket lines of striking gag writers to go on the Jay Leno television program broke every political rule. So did showing the news media a Rollins-devised negative ad against Romney only to repudiate it.

But Huckabee’s evangelicals did not care. He will not enjoy that kind of support in New Hampshire or most anywhere else.

The extra factor against Romney was anti-Mormon basis, not reflected in the entrance polls but strong nevertheless. That is one reason why Romney’s loss in Iowa is so crushing.

McCain had skipped the Iowa caucuses entirely in 2000 when he went on to rout George W. Bush in New Hampshire. This time McCain made a little effort in Iowa but not much. He was in Manchester, N.H., not Des Moines, on Thursday night, with aides not even hiding that they were rooting for Huckabee in Iowa.