It's All About Hillary

WashPost/ABC gives Huck a 35-27 lead over Mitt in Iowa alone.

Have you seen all the Christmas ads the candidates are churning out, complete with trees, gifts and Santa? I've got the details.

We keep hearing that the old McCain, circa 2000, is back. John Dickerson has some examples:

"In McCain's conversations with voters, I'm struck by the contrast between him and Barack Obama. I have covered Barack Obama more than John McCain this campaign. Obama tells audiences he's going to tell them uncomfortable truths, but he barely does it. McCain, on the other hand, seems to go out of his way to tell people things they don't like, on issues from immigration to global warming.

"Midway through the questioning period in Weare, N.H., a man stood to ask why McCain and other public officials weren't standing up to defend the military against attacks from the media. 'You talk about torture,' the man said, before cataloging what he saw as unfair attacks on soldiers accused of atrocities in Iraq. He continued, arguing that soldiers worried about getting prosecuted or tried in the press would become hesitant, and that would get them killed.

"The proper candidate response was to agree and praise the fighting men and women. That would win the man's vote and pick up an easy round of applause from the room. Instead, McCain argued that 'the unique thing about America is we hold our [soldiers] accountable.' McCain saw that the man wasn't swayed and asked him to speak again. He did so at length, suggesting that McCain wasn't putting the interest of the soldiers first.

"McCain had a trump card: His son is a Marine on the ground in Iraq. So he could easily prove that he cares about the welfare of the grunts. But he didn't mention his son (he almost never does)."

I've watched Huckabee in at least a dozen interviews now, and the man can hit major-league pitching. Time's Jay Carney is impressed by yesterday's "Today" appearance:

"You might have a new appreciation for why Mike Huckabee is surging both in both Iowa and in national polls in the race for the Republican nomination. In an interview with Meredith Vieira, Huckabee turned the hubub over the 'floating cross' in his Christmas ad into a lament about the absurdity of political correctness and the sullying of Christmas by conventional politicians. He stood by his criticism of President Bush's 'arrogant' foreign policy by touting the 'Powell-Schwarzkopf doctrine' of overwhelming force. Then he deftly dismissed the GOP establishment's opposition to him with a populist riff that was Edwardsian in both style and content. One money exchange:

"Huckabee: The Wall Street-to-Washington axis, this corridor of power, is absolutely, frantically against me. But out there in America, the reason we're number one in the polls is because I'm the guy that doesn't have some offshore mailbox bank account in the Caymans hiding my money. I'm the guy that worked my way up through it. And there are a whole lot of people in America that believe that the president ought to be a servant of the people and ought not to be elected to the ruling class. . . .

"Vieira: So why do you think they're opposed to you, Governor?

"Huckabee: Because they don't control me."