Or not, as the case may be:

Campaign staffers are calling the tour a five-day blitz across Iowa's 99 counties, but Clinton herself will only appear in 12. Husband/President Bill and "others" will hit the remaining 87 checkerboard jurisdictions that make up the Hawkeye State.

One blogger suspects so. Hillary may be wounding Bill's long-standing rapport with African-Americans. I guess it beats Republicans trying to "Osama" him.

"The fire in the belly that Trippi exhibited on Hardball yesterday reflected perfectly Edwards's populist fighter persona, just as Axelrod's mellow above the fray style echoed Obama. What does Penn's slimy shiftiness say about his candidate?" - Todd Beeton, MYDD.

Larison is already gaming the future for Clinton. I agree: she is by no means out of this. And it is very important not just to wound her candidacy. She has lots of money and plenty of party clout. Expectations, expectations ...

I think I have come down with a bout. More enjoyable than this fricking flu. Ross explains.

A reader writes:

As a loyal Dem, I was angered several months ago by the MSM's sensational and disproportionate coverage of Hillary's cackling on Meet the Press. However, after watching that spectacle yesterday - I've had enough. Her sense of entitlement and "who-does-he-think-he-is" presumptiveness is offensive. Those 15 seconds yesterday were her Howard Dean moment. It wasn't poll tested. Mark Penn didn't tell her what to say. That was HILLARY.

My favorite part, which I didn't notice until the third time I watched the clip: After Hill blurted out "I wanna hear that" and began her roaring laughter, Obama quietly and self-assuredly asks "Oh, you wanna hear that?" - as if to say "Oh really? Do you really want a piece of me?" He then went in for the kill. He's got her rattled. The wheels are coming off and its not a pretty sight.

Another adds:

I think I have given you grief in the past over not supporting Hillary. After the last two weeks, I am disgusted with her. I really hope Obama takes this.

A reader writes:

I live in a conservative county just north of Atlanta and just wanted to let you know I am beginning to hear the rough sketches of the smears that will be used against Obama in this region. Most of them revolve around Obama being a Muslim and not just a Muslim but a terrorist sympathizer. This is not just an aberration. I have now heard this from a handful of family members and friends. I got into a shouting match with my mother last night due to her accusing Obama of being a Muslim. I have also received a few emails from right wing lunatics in my extended family.

The scary part is these are smart people. They are college educated and make six figure incomes. The anti-intellectualism in this area is off the charts and is truly terrifying. How can you argue with someone that accuses Barack Obama of sympathizing with terrorists? If the election comes down to Huckabee vs. Obama I am afraid we will enter into a new dimension of Christianist based politics. A more dangerous and potentially catastrophically divisive dimension.

I'm sure this will come. I'm not sure it will have much of an impact outside those places which would never vote for Obama anyway. But it may also be something we just have to go through. What Bush has created has a logic of its own.

It's amazing to me to watch Rich Lowry and Charles Krauthammer begin to panic at the signs of Christianism taking over the Republican party. Where, one wonders, have they been for the past decade? They have long pooh-poohed those of us who have been warning about this for a long time, while cozying up to Christianists for cynical or instrumental reasons. But now they want to draw the line. Alas, it's too late, I think, for Charles to urge an openness toward atheism or non-religion in a party remade on explicitly religious grounds by Bush and Rove. Who was it, after all, who cited Jesus Christ as the most influential "philosopher" in his life as part of his electoral strategy? Who reorganized his party to base it on churches? The man whom Krauthammer eagerly supported in two consecutive elections.

The theocon consensus that front-runners Romney and Huckabee both reflect is that religion is intrinsic to public life and public debate, that it is a necessary component of any political discussion - and that this does not merely mean rote invocations of Nature's God or Providence or the kind of inclusive, vague language that the Founders believed in. It means a very thick, constant and inviolable recourse to religious argument in secular politics. If you haven't noticed this development in the past decade, you have had blinders on.

Charles again refers to a straw man so as not to sound too much like, well, "shrill hysterics" like yours truly:

Imposing religion means the mandating of religious practice. It does not mean the mandating of social policy that some people may have come to support for religious reasons.

But there is a critical distinction here that Charles elides. It may well be that support for a piece of social policy emerges from religious reasons. But in a secular society, it is vital that when making the argument for your position in public, you do not deploy arguments that depend on or invoke religiously-revealed truths. The essential civic discipline in a pluralist democracy is to translate your religious convictions into moral arguments - arguments that can persuade and engage people of all faiths or none. Only a few secularist extremists are saying that people's politics should not be informed in any way by religious faith (an impossibility in any case); most of us anti-Christianists are saying rather that political arguments should not be made on explicitly religious grounds, and political parties should not be allying themselves explicitly with one religion or another.

Let me confess something here. When I examine my conscience, I realize, in fact, that my absolute opposition to the torture of other human beings is, at its root, a religious conviction. It springs from my Catholic faith, which, despite the best efforts of the Catholic hierarchy, endures. The inherent dignity of all human beings is something I believe is a reflection of God's will through the revelation of Jesus Christ. In the end, that is where I stand. But you will notice that my arguments on this matter have very, very rarely depended on my resort to this religious argument. Because I am not addressing fellow members of my church, but others in America, those who are people of faith, and those who are not. So my arguments have been historical, legal, constitutional, moral, strategic, utilitarian. And they have been arguments - about American history, Western civilization, and winning a war. They have not been religious arguments. And I certainly don't believe that opposition to torture depends on a religious base. Many, many atheists and agnostics have been heroes in the long history of outlawing torture. The two most influential on me, over the years, have been Camus and Orwell, two atheists whose sense of morality outshines that of many Christians.

This, to me, is the critical distinction between a Christianist and a mere Christian. One wants to infuse politics with religion; the other wants to respect both, separately, and to keep religion private. I should add I do not want to banish the word "God" from the public square. But I do want that invocation to be as thin and as empty and as formal as the Founders intended. The current Republican party has reinvented itself as a force on opposite grounds. The party of Huckabee and Romney, the party of Hewitt and Dobson, the party of Ponnuru and Neuhaus is emphatically not a secular party.

And that is why part of me, I confess, wants Huckabee to win. So he can lose. So the GOP can lose - as spectacularly and humiliatingly as possible. If we are to rid conservatism of this theocratic cancer, we need to start over. Maybe it has to get worse before it can get better. But it is certainly too late for fellow-traveling Christianists like Lowry and Krauthammer to start whining now. This is their party. And they asked for every last bit of it.

She didn't pass the legislation she just said she did.

An interesting tally from the Concord Monitor:

Romney 28, McCain 21, Paul 16, Giuliani 14

I'd say McCain's main problem is Obama, because Obama is attracting many of the independents that McCain won in 2000. But Huckabee is not doing well. New Hampshire could be the brake on his momentum.

This awful:

Ezra:

What we're beginning to see here is how underdeveloped the arguments for Clinton were when separated from her aura of inevitability.

What arguments? The only sliver of policy difference is health care mandates. The rest is "experience", "dynasty," "inevitability", "competence." No wonder their only current argument is: cocaine.

The latest Sioux City Journal poll gives Obama and Huckabee nine point leads each. Obama had 1,000 house parties in the state last night.

I guess she wants to lose ugly.

If he's nowhere in Iowa, struggling in New Hampshire, tied third in South Carolina, and now third in Florida, how on earth is he supposed to win the nomination?

A reader notices something:

I know he's not your favorite pundit, but he is a good measuring stick.

Lately, he's been going after Huckabee and propping up Romney.  Yesterday, Taranto stated that, "Huckabee put his foot in his mouth in 1992, and he is still trying to extract it."  He later went on to prop up Romney against an editorial in the NYT against "an utterly mindless statement" but refused to mention the mindlessness of "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."

Methinks the Rudy Right is really, really scared of Huckabee and has Romney as their firewall in case Rudy isn't viable after Iowa and New Hampshire.

Every complacent secular Republican who has scorned those of us worried about the fundie right is beginning to squirm in the face of Huckabee's surge.

A Hillary precinct captain in Iowa explains why she's now caucusing for Obama:

Many readers have responded to the money moment in yesterday's Democratic debate:

I was undecided up to now, but forty seconds of YouTube has decided me: There's a sword at Obama's throat. Hillary grabs the sword and brandishes it, gloating.  Obama reaches out, takes the sword from her hand, and runs her through.  What an aphoristic moment.  Or as the YouTube commenters put it, PWNED.

In the larger context, this was a grievous unforced error on Hillary's part.  In my eyes, her crowing reaction damages her as much as Obama's comeback benefits him.  All she needed to do was listen politely as Obama squirmed, and the moment was hers. Instead, she reacted like a comic book supervillain and handed a superhero moment to Obama. I don't know who's got an exact count, but I suspect her team this season has racked up the most errors, both forced and unforced.  In sport, that has a lot of significance.  In politics, I think it's about to.

Then this:

I saw the clip you link to on TV this morning, with Obama being asked about all the old Clinton people advising him. You would hear Hillary's laugh rising loud and fake about the rest of the people there. It was stunningly typical of her, and the only way she'll get my vote now is if she's the nominee and McCain isn't.
Well: I think that says more about the awfulness of the GOP choice than the virtues of Senator Clinton.