Republican Contenders Face Off in Iowa

Mark, is Mike Huckabee the Republican story in Iowa, as we go into this?

MARK SHIELDS: Mike Huckabee is the story of the year. I think he's the biggest political story. I mean, it's really 32 years since we've had an obscure, unknown candidate compete in Iowa, and especially in a party that is as successionist-minded as the Republican Party has been.

I mean, that's always been the case in the Republican Party. It's not been an outsider, an open field, or anything of the sort.

And Mike Huckabee is the first, really, since Jimmy Carter to be an obscure unknown. Carter's case, former governor, same thing, of a southern states as Huckabee, and to come with an iconoclastic message, Jim, that really, frankly, a compassionate populism, sort of a sunny populism.

He's sort of John Edwards 2004 version. And at the same time, do it with humor and with a great stage presence. And I don't mean that in the contrived sense. He's just got a -- he's a natural on the platform.

JIM LEHRER: But, David, then Huckabee's gain, of course, has been Mitt Romney's loss in Iowa, has it not? Wasn't he leading all the way through up to now?

DAVID BROOKS: Right, well, he's got the money; he's got the organization. That may come through. Organization really, really matters here tonight.

But he just is a very conventional Republican. And Romney, as Mark said, is something new. And Huckabee has done it against the entire Republican establishment, and he's done it by combining social conservatism with economic populism.

Because when people look at their anxieties, they're afraid of losing their jobs, but they're afraid their daughters are going to get pregnant. They're afraid of divorce. That matters much more to their economic long term than outsourcing.

And he's managed to combine those two, and it's a gigantic story. It all comes down to how people trade in the caucus or who drives who out to vote.

So Romney's organization may come through in the end, but if it doesn't, then Huckabee will have opened up a reformation for the Republican Party and really opened up a new avenue for it to evolve in the future.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

MARGARET WARNER: And I'm here, once again, with Amy Walter and Stu Rothenberg.

All right, let's do the same thing for the Republicans, how we got here. Romney started out trying to essentially do an Edwards, didn't he, in terms of on the ground early?

STUART ROTHENBERG: He did. Actually, initially Iowans didn't know any of the Republicans except John McCain, so he appeared to be the early front-runner.

But you're right. Very quickly, it became Romney. It was Romney's money, his organization. He won the straw poll. And it was only recently that he was challenged.

Then the race took, obviously, a dramatic turn, when a lot of undecided voters decided they didn't like Romney, they were looking for a conservative, and there was Huckabee, waiting in the wings.

MARGARET WARNER: So what did happen? It was October. Romney was still 20 points to 25 points ahead of any of his closest rivals. Why the slide? And why was Huckabee able to exploit it?

AMY WALTER: Well, I think there was always this group of voters who were skeptical about Romney, who were waiting to see if another candidate would emerge. Remember, that was supposed to be Fred Thompson at one point who was going to be the consensus candidate, waiting for him. That never happened.

And then, suddenly, Mike Huckabee -- I think he did very well in debates. He did very well -- just he was personable, likable.

We talked a lot about how Democratic voters looking for change, but where Obama and Huckabee I think are similar is that they both gave voters something to vote for, right, in that there was an enthusiasm and aspirational part to their message. And so I think that's where he was able to succeed.

MARGARET WARNER: But back in the early fall, also, everyone was talking about the Mormon factor, that the evangelical Christians didn't entirely trust Romney, being a Mormon. Do you think that was a factor?

STUART ROTHENBERG: Oh, I think it was a huge factor. And it's not so much that they didn't trust him. They were uncomfortable with elevating a Mormon to the presidency and giving that legitimacy.

But I think that was a huge factor, Margaret. There were whole chunks of conservatives who couldn't buy into Romney, and were uncomfortable with Giuliani and McCain, and when Thompson ran it didn't look like very much, and so Huckabee became the default candidate. There was a vacancy there, and he just moved into it.

AMY WALTER: Well, he could actually be the more interesting story...

MARGARET WARNER: Down and up, I should say.

AMY WALTER: Right, he started up, then went down. But he could be the more interesting story. I mean, the talk right now is that, when you see the more recent polls, there's some where he could come in third.

This is a guy who was all but left for dead, but yet, a few weeks ago, got the endorsement of the Des Moines Register.

But the issues for John McCain had always been in Iowa the issue of immigration. Number one issue there, he's on the opposite side from the Republican base. That reportedly was going to just put him for dead in the state.

Instead, he's coming back and could come up a strong third. Is it because immigration is suddenly no longer important? Or is it simply that because the light has shined so harshly on Romney and Huckabee, neither has looked particularly good, suddenly he looks much better?

MARGARET WARNER: The other "surprise," quote, unquote, at least to pundits, was Fred Thompson going nowhere, and Iowa was a case in point. What happened?

STUART ROTHENBERG: The idea of Fred Thompson turned out to be a lot better than the candidate himself, Fred Thompson. So I think when people heard about Thompson, they said, "Another Ronald Reagan, he can be the alternative to Romney, he can be the true-blue conservative." When he actually entered the ring, he just didn't sell very well.