Agents of change...

It was a very big night all the way around. First off my buddy and soon to be weekly radio cohort Stephen Baldwin takes home $69,000 tonight for his mother's Breast Cancer Research Fund on Celebrity Apprentice.

Then there was the issue of accurately predicting the outcomes in BOTH parties tonight down to the exact order. Matt Lewis is my witness. But my prediction on Obama stems over thirteen months ago. It was also a relish of a good time for my friend Michael Medved who like some others including me had been labeled by our colleague and friend Hugh Hewitt "an analyst who could not be trusted." (Hey Matt - that means East Coast v. West Coast goes East Coast in Iowa - right?)

It was a bad night for Ed Rollins who perhaps from now on will learn to speak in a more temperate nature when dining in public. It was an uncomfortably bad night for Hillary who looked even more dreadful during her "victory" speech than she had in the debate with the drivers' license question. And it was just pure misery for my friend Hugh, whose chances of getting to be Mitt Romney's version of Tony Snow got drubbed by a margin beyond what anyone saw coming. (Rollins only predicted a five point margin...)

I also felt bad for the candidates - even the winning ones. They all looked so exhausted, so tired, so wiped. Their speeches were lackluster and generally uninspiring - though Huckabee gets major kudos for quoting Chesterton.

So now the race is on with two clear frontrunners...

And just in time for tomorrow's news cycles, the same organizations that went to work for Huckabee in Iowa, have already begun transfering staff, budget, and bodies to New Hampshire. It seems Huck is unwilling to concede New Hampshire merely because "he's not supposed to win there." Most pundits are now saying that it is likely that Huckabee and McCain could go one, two regardless of order. I don't know that I'm ready to cop to that just yet, but there's no doubt Huckabee's story is inspirational.

And IF the candidate for the Dems is - as I have predicted from the beginning - Barack Hussein Obama, it is nice that for once the GOP will have a candidate that will work harder for church going African Americans than perhaps the "established black candidate" will. In order to hold Ohio in the general that may be the exact combination of possibility.

All in all a good nite. And a hearty congratulations to the Huckabee camp, their blowout win historical in the odds against it, and now giving Huck that little boost he needs to propel funding, organization, and votes.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Hugh suddenly needed to "take tomorrow off the air" to recuperate, it was my understanding that the doctors did not need to utilize the defib-paddles, but decided to anyway when they realized every time they upped the voltage he would mutter "buck-eyes."

Poor guy...