The Occasional Observer

It was probably a bitter pill for the folks over at NRO, but Huck beat any and all expectations in Iowa yesterday. Can he get a bounce out of this in NH? Most people seem to thing "no way." And he doesn't necessarily need one, with SC and FL around the corner on friendlier turf. And yet, would anyone be totally surprised if Huck shot up to challenge for 2nd place?

As for York's column, he points to an interesting anecdote about Mitt's campaign:

On the day of the caucuses...Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman who had traveled with Romney all around Iowa, explained his view of the Huckabee campaign. “We’re going up against a loose confederation of fair taxers, and homeschoolers, and Bible study members, and so this will be a test to see who can generate the most bodies on caucus day,” Fehrnstrom said.“Not that there’s anything wrong with any of those groups?” I interrupted.“Not that there’s anything wrong, but that’s just a fact,” Fehrnstrom continued. “That’s just where he has found his support. I have a theory about why Mike Huckabee holds public events in Iowa like getting a haircut or going jogging, or actually leaving Iowa and going to California to appear on the Jay Leno show. It’s because he doesn’t have the infrastructure to plan events for him. And when he does do events in Iowa, he goes to the Pizza Ranch, where you have a built-in crowd, so you don’t have to make calls to turn people out. We’re very proud of the organization we have built in Iowa.”

Fehrnstrom, like the rest of Romney’s team, was unfailingly professional. But his analysis pointed to a blind spot in the Romney campaign, a blind spot most likely shared by the candidate himself. For all his money, and all his energy, and all his organizational skills, Romney could not put to rest the doubts many Iowa Republicans felt about his genuineness, or lack of genuineness.

As they paid more attention to politics in the days leading up to the caucuses, some of those voters came to believe that Huckabee had more of that indefinable something that they want in a candidate. In the end, the race wasn’t about structure at all — something Romney never figured out but Huckabee knew all along.