Getting it half right on primary importance

David Broder:

It may seem paradoxical, but New Hampshire is poised to close down the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and launch a wide-open Republican contest.

The difference is that Barack Obama, the winner of the Iowa Democratic caucuses, can well repeat his victory here over Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. But Mike Huckabee faces much steeper odds in duplicating his Iowa win on the Republican side.

While Huckabee shattered Mitt Romney's strategy by winning Iowa, where Romney had invested massively in advertising and organization, he is likely simply to empower John McCain to repeat his 2000 victory in New Hampshire.

A second Romney loss would effectively end the former Massachusetts governor's candidacy -- a victim of a campaign that lost its credibility along with its ideological definition.

But McCain and Huckabee have yet to build broad constituencies among mainstream Republicans. Huckabee's following is centered among evangelical Christians, who dominated the low-turnout Iowa caucuses. McCain's greatest appeal is to Republican-leaning independents who powered his 2000 victory and who remain loyal to him.

McCain has been endorsed by more than two dozen New Hampshire newspaper editorial pages, a major boost to his standing among independent voters.

The uncertainty facing Huckabee and McCain is heightened by their relatively meager campaign treasuries and by the shortage of time for further fundraising before the expensive Feb. 5 primaries in California, New York and other major states.

That opens at least something of an opportunity for Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson to demonstrate their ability in Florida, South Carolina and other states that were part of George W. Bush's political base. The mainstream Republicans in those states are still looking for a candidate.

That search becomes more urgent as the major party politicians come to understand that Obama could be the most electable candidate the Democrats have fielded in many years.

If that seems a hasty judgment, consider what Obama already has demonstrated. Running in two of the "whitest" states in the country, Obama has shown crossover appeal that defies conventional wisdom about the limits an African-American candidate will face.

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Hillary Clinton has one more chance to stop Obama's momentum here. New Hampshire has been good to the Clintons in the past. They need the state to come to their rescue one more time.

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The Democrat race will be down to Clinton and Obama after New Hampshire and she will be running in states outside of South Carolina, where she will have some advantages and she has the money to keep going. With neither winning a majority in any state the head to head race will make for a more interesting contest.

One of the interesting aspects of the Obama win in white states is that it has not raised the issue of whether he is black enough which came up when he first announced. Will the old "down with the struggle" civil rights leaders continue to embrace the Clinton's? We should find out in South Carolina and Florida.

Broder's comments on the Republican race are dead on. A McCain win will leave two underfunded winners to face Rudy Giuliani in states where Giuliani is stronger and has already made an investment. While winning will draw in some funds the compressed nature of the schedule does not give the underfunded candidates the time they need to raise the money and plan its expenditure.