Below The Beltway

David Brooks sums up better than I could why Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee won in Iowa last night:

Obama has achieved something remarkable. At first blush, his speeches are abstract, secular sermons of personal uplift — filled with disquisitions on the nature of hope and the contours of change.

He talks about erasing old categories like red and blue (and implicitly, black and white) and replacing them with new categories, of which the most important are new and old. He seems at first more preoccupied with changing thinking than changing legislation.

Yet over the course of his speeches and over the course of this campaign, he has persuaded many Iowans that there is substance here as well. He built a great organization and produced a tangible victory.

He’s made Hillary Clinton, with her wonkish, pragmatic approach to politics, seem uninspired. He’s made John Edwards, with his angry cries that “corporate greed is killing your children’s future,” seem old-fashioned. Edwards’s political career is probably over.

Obama is changing the tone of American liberalism, and maybe American politics, too.

While I don’t agree with nearly any of his policy positions, you’ve got to admit that Barack Obama is not your typical Democratic politician; which is one of the reasons that the Clinton campaign is having such a hard time figuring out how to beat him. For a guy that almost nobody knew anything about a year ago, he’s built up a reservoir of good will that even the most cynical Clinton dirty trick hasn’t been able to drain. I don’t think there going to be able to do it either.

Which is why I think Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for President in 2008.

As for Huckabee, Brooks contends that he won because he’s redefining conservatism:

Huckabee’s victory is not a step into the past. It opens up the way for a new coalition.

A conservatism that recognizes stable families as the foundation of economic growth is not hard to imagine. A conservatism that loves capitalism but distrusts capitalists is not hard to imagine either. Adam Smith felt this way. A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending.

Will Huckabee move on and lead this new conservatism? Highly doubtful. The past few weeks have exposed his serious flaws as a presidential candidate. His foreign policy knowledge is minimal. His lapses into amateurishness simply won’t fly in a national campaign.

So the race will move on to New Hampshire. Mitt Romney is now grievously wounded. Romney represents what’s left of Republicanism 1.0. Huckabee and McCain represent half-formed iterations of Republicanism 2.0. My guess is Republicans will now swing behind McCain in order to stop Mike.

Which is exactly what I think will happen. Ironically, John McCain, the man who was considered a party maverick eight years go, will be looked on as the man who can save the GOP from the Huckaboom.