The New York Times blog has this on the Republican class dilemma:

Class war is forbidden in the Republican playbook. But Huckabee, despite an inept last week of campaigning, has forced the Republican party to face the Wal-Mart shoppers that they have long taken advantage of. He’s here. He’s Gomer. And he’s not going away.

Huckabee revels in the class war. He’s Two-Buck Huck, and darn proud of it. He likes nothing better than playing the Hick from Hope. He and his wife lived in a trailer for a while, he points out. His son killed a dog one summer, “a mangy dog” at that, as Huckabee explained to the befuddled national press corps. He said he used to eat squirrels, cooking them up in his popcorn popper. Ewwwwhhh!

And what’s up with that Chuck Norris shadow, following him everywhere like a late-night rerun? To the establishment, Norris is a B-lister with a bad hair dye and a ’70s-era karate shtick. They prefer Bruce Willis – bald Republican action hero.

C’mon now, Chuck Norris could take down Bruce Willis any day! But that obsession with having Norris at every speech is a tad worrying.

Meanwhile, maybe this is why Clinton lost in Iowa?

Clinton’s speeches were laundry lists of issues designed to win over voters.

In one speech she gave in Ames a few days before the caucus, she spoke about global warming, health care, Northern Ireland, the Medicare “doughnut hole,” student loans, job training, “the plight of American translators in Iraq,” diabetes, dairy farming, country-of-origin labeling, food production standards, the high cost of land and manure disposal. And that is just a partial list.

Obama’s speeches were much more simple, much more emotional and much more direct. “They said this day would never come,” he said Thursday night.

“They said our sights were set too high. You have done what the cynics said we could not do. You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days.”

· About the author: Sunny Hundal is editor of Liberal Conspiracy. He works full time as a journalist, commentator, blogger, activist and general layabout. He was voted Guardian blogger of the year in 2006. Also at: Pickled Politics, on Twitter and Comment is free.

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· Filed under: Blog , Foreign affairs , United States

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