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Brownback dropping out and Tancredo doing nothing of relevance has left Huckabee the default choice of the conservative Christian crowd.

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What makes this development even more interesting is the split between the leaders and the flock. The National Right to Life Committee endorsed Thompson; Pat Robertson endorsed Guiliani; Romney has a string of endorsements from Conservative Christian leaders. Apparently the actual CC voters aren't paying attention to those endorsements.

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From what I understand, the Huckabee campaign is beating the crap out of everyone else on the ground in Iowa among the conservative Christian activist groups. Huckabee himself stumps all over Iowa. And he's planning on moving his campaign headquarters from Arkansas to Des Moines and hiring even more ground troops. I suspect that partially (if not completely) explains Huckabee's strength in Iowa; while the endorsements from some of the national groups are important, Huckabee has campaign people everywhere in Iowa -- and that's certainly a state where the retail politics of having campaign workers knocking on doors and sitting in with worship small groups and attending coffee hours at churches, etc. matters a lot. Iowa voters are conditioned to having attention lavished on them by campaigns and have come to expect that level of attention before going to the primary caucus and voting for a candidate.

So it's essentially Iowa or bust for Huckabee, and I think the recent poll results show how many resources he's putting into the state.

As far as the wisdom of the strategic calculation, the Iowa bounce propelled Kerry to the nomination in 2004, but meant nothing for Dole and Pat Robertson in 1988. So it's a gamble, for sure. Even if he wins Iowa, he's going to have to scramble very fast to get ready for a multi-state campaign. I'm not sure he's as well-positioned for that right now as Romney or Giuliani, but 2 months is a long time. I think it's the 'right' move for Huckabee because it's likely the only one available to him.

I like the idea of buying up Huckabee until Iowa then dumping afterwards.