…remember that in 1988, Pat Robertson won the Iowa GOP caucus.
However, there was about a month between Iowa and New Hampshire back then. Might not me time to shift gears then. Also remember that South Carolina was set up as a firewall by Lee Atwater in the late 80s and early 90s to forestall an insurgency-type candidate…and that South Carolina is exactly the sort of state that might gravitate to a Southern governor with a strong religious streak.
Iowa wasn’t even on anyone’s radar until Jimmy Carter won there in 1976. And yet, from this one aberrant event, everyone’s built the caucus system into some sort of political Elector of Saxony. And now that everybody wants to matter, we’re going to rush through this thing like beer through a frat-boy, be done by Valentine’s Day, and then be stuck in general-election mode for the next NINE MONTHS.
This is no way to run a democracy, people. Most countries can blow through the WHOLE PROCESS in 60 days. May be time to take a look at the parliamentary system again (although APSA didn’t go that far in 1950 and the only implementation of their plans was by Newt Gingrich in 1995, with…varying degrees of success).
EDIT TO ADD: According to Novak’s column this morning, Huckabee was on the wrong side of the Southern Baptist revolution in 1980…which means he may not be able to count on the support of the various Baptist ayatollahs who run things in Nashville and Houston. Apparently the head of the SBC is a Fred Thompson man, which could just be a Tennessee thing…but this horse race isn’t even close to over, and there’s going to be a lot of glue made between here and the finish line.