Posted by
Steve on Wednesday, January 02, 2008 12:02:24 PM
Welcome to a New Year, it will be a time of great change for the US. We will be selecting our next President and a new Congress. The process starts tomorrow night in Iowa. The stop after Iowa is New Hampshire.
The Huckabee phenomena took him from a virtual unknown to front runner in Iowa. Then when the full light of day was shown on his positions, he started taking on water. When the negative positions started to come to light, he tried to cry foul. Without any money to craft his own image, he left it to his opponents to craft it for him, and he did not like it. Then, Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan and his lack of foreign policy experience rose up and bit him. He sounded like a Democrat instead of a Republican. When Romney started running ads showing what Huckabee had done as Governor and what Romney had done as Governor, he had no response. He made a negative ad and showed it to reporters and said he was not going to show it. He put on a great show of piety in doing so. He was hoping that they would report the negative things and say that Huckabee was not going to go negative. It backfired on him big time. The reporters laughed at him. That is a disaster for any candidate.
Tomorrow night in Iowa, Huckabee will still poll fairly well. He will probably not win Iowa. Romney will be the winner with Huckabee coming in second. The real race is to see who can come in third. If Rudy Giuliani comes in near the bottom, he is in real trouble. Thompson needs to come in third to remain viable. The polls say it will be Romney, Huckabee and McCain.
On the Democrat side the race is close between the big three of Obama, Edwards and Clinton. If Clinton ends up third, she is in real trouble. If she wins, the race is over.
New Hampshire is another test for the candidates. John McCain is putting all his apples into New Hampshire. He did very well in 2000. He actually defeated President Bush in the primary. He did it by winning the Independent vote. This time there is competition for the Independent vote from the Democrats. If Clinton wins the Iowa Caucus, the completion is over and McCain will be an easy winner. If Obama wins the Democrat Iowa Caucus, the competition is on and McCain probably takes second. Romney will take first or second depending on what McCain does. Again, the competition is for third place. There are no real sure markers on who is in third place in New Hampshire. The polls all have different people in third place.
I still stand by my prediction for the Republican nomination. I predicted way back at the beginning of 2007 that Mitt Romney would be the nominee for the Republican Party. I have not seen much that would make me change my mind. I also predicted that Mrs. Bill Clinton would be the Democrat nominee. That is still the probable outcome. There are signs that Democrats are coming to their senses and thinking about selecting Barak Obama. Tomorrow will be the key to that decision. If Obama wins, then Mrs. Clinton will have a hard time winning. If she wins, then the nomination is all over.