Huckabee Wins Iowa, Expect More Attacks from Punditry

The Christian Right and the Fairtaxers came through for Huckabee last night in the Iowa Caucus, giving him a substantial 11 point victory over Mitt Romney.

Huckabee's success is truly amazing when you consider how hard the Republican machine was working against him. Novak, Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Malkin, Will, and about every conservative pundit with an audience was denouncing Huckabee as they bought into the Romney/Rudy/Thompson hysteria.

Expect the attacks on Huckabee to escalate. I fully expect Limbaugh to come out with a qualified official endorsement of Thompson or Romney before the New Hampshire primary, possibly even today.

The republican elites do not want to give up control of the party to the members, they are still feeling their oats after derailing the last amnesty bill and essentially killing the Harriet Myers nomination to the Supreme Court. They feel they are giving the Republican Party and even the president marching orders and they now have a huge problem with a strong Huckabee campaign that is not beholding to them.

But as Rush likes to say about the media: "If they don't make you, they can't break you".

Limbaugh, as the most powerful voice in the conservative movement, has been very disappointing.

He keeps saying "don't tell me Huckabee is a Reagan conservative". I don't know of anybody who is saying that Huckabee is a Reagan conservative. Maybe I'm just out of the loop.

Rush (and Hannity) also gives every Huckabee supporter on his show a raking over the coals, while giving Huckabee bashers a free pass.

One caller went unchallenged by Rush as he accused the Southern Baptists of being a religion that keeps women down and basically makes them slaves. Another female caller said she could never vote for an ex-minister, ex-rabbi, or ex-priest.

Both of these bigoted comments went unchallenged by Rush, yet he had no problem quoting Huckabee or Ed Rollins (Huckabee's campaign manager)out of context. You would think that Rush would have better sense than that after his "phony soldiers" controversy last fall!

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Sean Hannity basically became a Romney advertisement on Thursday afternoon before the caucus, as he sucked up to Mitt and attacked Huckabee. Mitt went unchallenged on Hannity's show, and Sean wonders why Huckabee didn't come on that afternoon.

Ann Coulter made fun of Huckabee's stretch marks and basically said we could expect more stained dresses in the Oval Office if Huckabee gets elected.

The rank-and-file republicans see through this BS coming from the conservative pundits, explaining Huckabee's success in Iowa.