Romney Finishes Second Like Edwards Wasting Resources

McCAIN TRAIN REVS UP FOR RUN TO THE NOMINATION

Romney's final numbers in Iowa are not bad on the face of it. They only look ominous much like John Edwards's because so much time and, in Romney's case, money was spent for a distant second.

But, it was second and could look even better if he was somehow able to win the New Hampshire primary. He's in the running, but like Iowa he has candidate peaking at right time.

The Granite State loves tough-minded politicians like McCain, if Romney can't win a state bordering his own Massachusetts, the argument can be made that voters who presumably have been watching Romney for years in Boston know best and repudiated his candidacy.

FRED THOMPSON
The Politico website said Thompson would bail if he didn't win 15 percent. He didn't, but came close. He narrowly beat out McCain in Iowa and still has a strong third place standing in New Hampshire.

It still third with little outlook of moving up. If Thompson drops out, it could be argued that the rest of the field below him should do likewise. In any other race, his prospects are undeniably dim, but there isn't a candidate in the Republican field who can claim number one.

SEN. JOHN MC CAIN
The big winner in Iowa could be McCain. Imagine the kid who doesn't study for the big test and still gets a B+. That's McCain in Iowa, who didn't even campaign there and spoke against the state beloved ethanol subsidies. He still finish with a strong 12 percent and on to New Hampshire.

McCain made the huge bet on the war and it's finally beginning to payoff. That coupled with the lack of a candidate with true conservative credentials, makes the Arizona senator, the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination.

Huck's Playing With House Money With Leno Appearance

McCAIN IS CLOSING IN ON SURPRISING THIRD PLACE FINISH IN IOWA

As Mike Huckabee flies to Burbank to tape the "Tonight Show" with Jay Leno you've got wonder is the former Arkansas governor counting his chickens before they're hatched in tomorrow's Iowa Caucus?

This is definitely a national play for the thus far successful, but still cash-strapped campaign to parlay a likely win in tomorrow's caucus to next week's New Hampshire primary and beyond. It might backfire and give Mitt Romney stronger than expected second-place finish.

It can't look good for the self-described underdog to be gallivanting to Hollywood while his opponents are still pressing the flesh in the frigid Iowa winter.

Instead of finishing off their dramatic upset in Iowa, the Huckabee campaign is inexplicably using the credit earned there for the next race. The question is whether Iowa Republicans who were not solidly in Huckabee's column and I believe his popularity in the state is a bit soft and unable to transfer to the rest of the country, will not shift to another candidate.

I believe Romney will gain some of those votes and finish three to four points off the pace. The big winner, though, may be Sen. John McCain.

The religion question is being overhyped on the conservative side of the ballot. There still isn't a true evangelical in the race, despite what Huckabee tells you and while some may be leery of Romney's Mormonism, they really see him as secular, at best. Those religious voters may scrap their beliefs and go with Sen. McCain, the champion of foreign policy and backer of the surge in Iraq.

Amazingly, a strong third-place finish in Iowa without the benefit of any organization and opinions heretical to most ethanol-loving Iowans, would be a major story tomorrow. It would affirm the belief that McCain sticks to his beliefs and possesses the intuition of policies two years down the road.

When it comes to the Iraq War, he's the anti-Obama. He's the only candidate who can say that he didn't change gears a year ago when his support for the war nearly destroyed his campaign. Now, the war ain't so bad and neither is McCain's bid for the Republican nomination.

Romney's Mormonism Is Different Than Kennedy's Catholicism

AMERICA'S IGNORANCE OF MORMONS COULD RUIN ROMNEY'S RUN

On the HBO series, Big Love, the patriarch Bill Henrickson, played by Bill Paxton, juggles three wives, seven children and a home improvement chain of stores, while trying to shake the manipulative fundamentalist Mormon prophet, Roman Grant.

The series isn't about the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, but its rogue offshoot that still practices polygamy. Most Americans erroneously associate Mormonism with plural marriage, which was banned over a hundred years ago. Can Americans deviate the two and elect a Mormon president?

Former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, doesn't wear his religion on his sleeve. He doesn't claim to be a devout follower and his background takes him around the country. He's the son of the popular former Michigan governor, George Romney, saved the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake and became governor of the Bay State.

But, can Americans elect a person whose religion seems to illicit such mystery and controversy? Invariably, Romney's electability is compared to John F. Kennedy becoming the first Catholic in the White House in 1960.

Back then, the Pope was the bogeyman that would call the shots from Rome, they said. Like everything else nearly fifty years ago, we live in a different society, albeit more diverse.

That apparent diversity in our country doesn't quite equate to any sensibility. These are times when divisiveness is the paramount currency in our lives. The president equivocates that either "you're with me or you're against me."

If you're a Democrat, then every Republican is a dirty, rotten fool and every person speaking a foreign language or wearing ethnic garb is a terrorist.

Romney doesn't mention his religious views and he shouldn't. At times, he's courted his party's religious right on the grounds that Mormonism is just another religion based on Christianity. In the primaries, this tact has had some success in attracting conservatives who view the clean-cut, gentile politician as similar in looks and demeanor to their neighborhood pastor.

If Romney advances to the general election, expect things to get downright nasty. This is politics, afterall. He'll likely have to turn away a huge whisper campaign that will play off his religion's past and unsaid beliefs.

While Romney is not a polygamist, his family's history serves up plenty of fodder for opponents to link that dirty secret to Romney in the present.

In the same way that Kennedy's political rivals claimed he would take orders from the Pope, a connection could be made with the fundamentalist LDS belief that one can speak directly to God.

Not only would this be blasphemous to Christians, it would also cast Romney as crazed. Who talks to God, but crazy people?

Then, there's Christian extremists like televangelist Bill Keller who talked Salon.com's Michael Scherer and believe Romney's campaign is one big billboard paid for by the Mormons.

"A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan," Keller declared in his daily e-mail devotional last May. His reasoning went like this: Romney's election would serve as a giant advertisement for a competing religion, Mormonism, which Keller and others believe has falsely portrayed itself as another form of Christianity in an effort to find converts. "He would influence people to seek out the Mormon faith," Keller predicted of a Romney presidency. "They would get sucked into those lies and they would eventually die and go to hell."

This isn't 1960 and people just don't know Mormons outside of Utah. They're nice people. I know some, but others watch TV characters like Bill Henrickson and think how weird it is to be married to three woman and then look at Mitt Romney with a strange feeling in their guts--the kind that doesn't transfer to votes.