A couple of new polls show Mike Huckabee closing in fast on Romney in Iowa. This is actually a relatively “good” piece of bad news for the always nervous Romney campaign. Two reasons: First, something finally has happened to lower Romney’s dangerously high Iowa expectations. The great oddsmakers in the expectations casino see polling like this and start to expect a little less from Romney and a little more from Huckabee. Romney still has an Iowa expectations problem, but far better for him to let Huckabee get hot now and make a Romney win in January (if he wins) mean something. Second, now the media will start to take another look at Huckabee. That’s good for Huckabee in that it means more money and attention. Kudos to Huckabee and his team for breaking through. But this second look will be more critical and Huckabee has plenty of vulnerabilities (raising taxes as governor, Darwin the faker, last name sounds like village idiot character in a Faulkner story … OK, I take that last one back) that will now get more attention from the voters, with plenty of help from the Romney and Thompson campaigns. So it is far better for Mitt that the media gets a big dose of “Huckabee is hot in Iowa” news now, rather than discover it on election night and trigger a phantasm of Huck-o-mania. That said, with Huckabee moving up and good new Rudy TV on the airwaves for the first time, Romney has plenty of things to worry about.
