A candidate to sink your teeth into?

I think I can say rather definitively that the GOP picture is as clear as mud, but it also looks like a previous "minor player" is making serious waves. I must confess, I didn't see Mike Huckabee emerging as a viable candidate, but there you have it. He's got the conservative credentials, he talks the talk, he's got some name recognition and he hasn't been taken seriously for the past 6 months. This means that he's managed to evade the Giuliani-McCain-Romney-Thompson snipe-fest, so his skeletons are still largely buried.

Whereas with the Democrats I think an aggregate national look is appropriate, the GOP race will be determined by momentum from the early primaries and caucuses, and that's where Huckabee is doing well. What's more, it looks to me like he's getting some of the "soft" backers of McCain and Romney in his camp, which is what I had previously said it would take to beat Giuliani (who, incidentally, is suffering from some rather serious ethics difficulties himself.)

So, let's take a look at some of the early states, shall we?

In Iowa, Huckabee and Romney are in a statistical dead heat. Giuliani and Thompson are a distant third and fourth, and McCain is desperately trying to avoid finishing behind Ron Paul(!)

New Hampshire shows Romney with a comfortable lead with McCain and Giuliani fighting for second and third, Huckabee 4th and Paul in 5th, ahead of Thompson.

South Carolina looks like a very competitive 4-horse race, with Romney, Giuliani, Thompson and Huckabee all in the thick of it. That said, it looks like Huckabee is starting to siphon off a lot of Thompson's support.

This is going to be a very interesting next couple of months. The Iowa caucus is January 3, less than a month away. A win by Huckabee and poor showings by Thompson and McCain could give Huckabee the momentum to get the moral conservatives firmly in his corner. Thompson waited too long to make his move, and his candidacy is starting to fall apart at the seams.