Jody correctly notes that Mike Huckabee isn’t getting much credit for his win last night, but I think that’s an analytical mistake. Huckabee is still an underdog. If I had to bet $100 on who wins the nomination, I wouldn’t put it on him.

But Huckabee has done something which people may notice if he does well in New Hampshire (possible) and wins South Carolina (likely). Which is this: Huckabee has created a position which would be strategically difficult for the Democratic nominee to run against.

Don’t be fooled by the current head-to-head polls showing him losing by double-digits to either Obama or Clinton. That’s based largely on name ID. The problem for Democrats is that they are preparing to campaign against a classic Republican: rich, war-mongering, green eyeshade, skull-and-crossbones, etc. Huckabee is a populist who doesn’t fit any of those themes. Should Huckabee win the nomination, Democrats will have to either (a) figure out a new path to insurgency, or (b) come up with their own ideas. Neither of these things is impossible. But as things stand now, you can imagine the way a Democratic nominee would campaign against Romney, McCain, Giuliani, or Thompson.

Populists pose different sets of problems for Democrats.

So what really happened in Iowa? Candidates can’t win the nomination in Iowa, but they can lose it if they expose a colossal weakness (see: Dean, Howard). And the big loser in Iowa was Mitt Romney, whose campaign is now over.

Let’s look at what happened to Romney in the Hawkeye State:

Tom Edsall reports that Romney spent north of $80 million during 2007; more than $10 million of that was on TV ads in Iowa. He campaigned in the state longer than any other Republican. He amassed a giant lead in the polls, which stretched to more than 20 points at times. Despite all of this, he sat in fourth and eventually fifth, place in national polls. His aides kept assuring people that their strategy was to win Iowa, leverage that into a victory in New Hampshire, and that, eventually, his national numbers would follow. But on Thursday night Mike Huckabee beat Romney like a drum, winning by 9 points.

Losing isn’t what’s fatal to Romney—the problem is that Iowa shows that voters just don’t like him. Mitt Romney may be a smart executive, a good man, and many other wonderful things. But he’s lousy at winning elections. As an incumbent governor, he ducked a fight with an unproven Deval Patrick because he knew he couldn’t win. As the heavy favorite in Iowa, spending tens of millions of dollars and more time in the state than anyone else, he couldn’t beat an unknown, under-funded former Arkansas governor. According to Rasmussen Reports, Romney has—by a huge margin—the worst favorable/unfavorable rating of anyone running from either party. If voters don’t like you, nothing else matters.

Romney’s support in New Hampshire, which has always been soft, is likely to splinter now. If he loses New Hampshire, which I’d put pretty good odds on, then my guess is Romney drops out after South Carolina on January 19. He could hang in until Michigan, but by that time, his numbers there will probably have much degraded.

Of course, since Romney can self-finance (he’s already spent $17 million of his own money on the campaign), he can hang around as long as his ambition and ego require.

Hillary Clinton lost, too, although her third-place finish has a (tiny) bright side. First the good news: By finishing a nip and tuck in front of her, John Edwards stays in the race and keeps the anti-Clinton vote split. Then there’s the bad news: Bill Clinton lost both Iowa and New Hampshire in 1992; Hillary has not yet proven to possess his electoral resiliency. This is the first time she’s suffered electoral defeat and it’s not obvious that she must recover.

To make matters worse, I’ve been with Obama in New Hampshire all day and the crowds he’s drawing are very impressive, very smitten, and very energetic. I’ve followed Clinton quite a bit in the last few months and I’ve never seen her draw this type of support.

Victory! We win! In Iowa! A triumph for, um, somebody! The results of the caucus in Iowa are in, but what they mean is hard to say.

Some Republicans friends are insisting it’s an enormous victory for McCain, who skipped Iowa and thus wasn’t damaged there, while his clearest rivals, Romney and Thompson, emerge with injured reputations. Others are proclaiming that it means Giuliani has succeeded in his plan to let the social-conservative candidates split the early primaries and then sweep in on Super Tuesday to take all the major delegate slates.

Hardly anyone appears to take seriously the first apparent fact—that Huckabee has just won delegates to the Republican convention. Partly that’s because no one can imagine him winning a general election, and partly that’s because no one can imagine him winning New Hampshire in the next primary (which means any momentum he has from Iowa is immediately thwarted). But I’m not so sure. He can carry Texas and some other states and arrive at the Republican convention with a serious block of votes.

That is, of course, if the Republicans get no consensus candidate before the national convention. Let’s hope that’s not going to happen. The last thing we need is several additional months of this kind of campaigning.

Joe Carter, who headed up Huckabee’s press office for the past month, has returned to his position at FRC. Over on his blog, the Evangelical Outpost, he shares some of his experiences and insights about the primaries and Huckabee’s campaign.

“Peace is a communist plot,” Irving Kristol once declared. It’s one of my favorites of his many good lines—overstated, overheated, and overdue; forcing us to notice, in a way no softer phrasing would, that nearly every organization during the Cold War with the word peace in its title was in the service of the Soviet Union.

Something similar seems to be happening with the word religion these days, at least in the international community. Like peace, it’s a saw that cuts in only one direction. Scrinch, it bites against the West to advance Islam, then with a ssssh it slides silently back without impact on the Arab countries. Here, for example, is a recent U.N. Resolution against defamation of religion that rather proves the point. Religion is an Islamic plot.

Well, maybe that’s too much. But it helps explain the irritation of many Christians that the protests against religious defamation only seem to work in favor of Muslims. In Canada, Mark Steyn is under legal attack for defaming Islam—and this in a country in which it is taken for granted that Christianity is something that must be suppressed.

The Wall Street Journal’s Taste Page has some interesting articles this morning.

One is a parent’s lament that video games have sucked the life out of his children. It contained this gem: “The other day we saw a kid at church, in a semi-trance, going down the aisle to Holy Communion while clicking on a hand-held Game Boy. Talk about worshiping a false god.”

And then there’s this column about Mike Huckabee–a man of the Religious Left? “With increasing frequency, Mr. Huckabee invokes his faith when advocating greater government involvement in just about every aspect of American life. In doing so, Mr. Huckabee has actually answered the prayers of the religious left.”

Ya gotta love it. The striking Writers Guild of America is being struck by its own employees.

Will the picketers be picketed in ever thickening concentric circles producing a narcotizing effect on passersby? Will this drama become its own reality show, eliminating the need for writers altogether? Will Jay Leno picket himself for writing his own monologues while on strike, then cross his own picket line in order to make it on time to do his show? Will someone finally prove that Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, or will we just let that one slide for now?

Well, the Clinton express seems to have suffered a delay in Iowa. Barack Obama is an interesting political phenomenon. His inter-racial identity makes him a symbolic blank screen onto which Americans can project their perennial post-cultural fantasies. The early Republic was filled with claims that America transcended Old World divisions and conflicts. Obama helps us continue in our national love of “beyondism,” as in beyond partisanship, beyond racisim, beyond division, and etc. That’s what his campaign means when it trumpets him as offering “hope.” He also represents a vote to move beyond the Baby Boomers and the Sixties. Of all his beyonds, it’s the one I find most hopeful.

I am informed by some big-time know-it-alls that the event last night was not, in fact, the election, but that this whole presidential business will continue for quite some time, perhaps even into April. (Whatever happened to good old-fashioned court intrigue, poisoned figs, and jousts . . .)

Well, if you simply insist on this voting nonsense but still don’t know who to vote for, let Glassbooth choose the candidate best suited to your needs, using twenty (not ten—twenty) points of compatability.

Stop wasting your time hanging out in bars, Internet cafes, and health clubs hoping to find Mr. or Ms. Right (or Left). Let a piece of software do it for you.

By way of Wired News.