Listen:

Until this gets settled for once and for all, Mitt and Rudy and McCain are top-tier competitive in states around the country and Huck and Paul are rising representatives of key new constituencies. -- Me



I don’t think Huckabee and Paul are the ideal candidates to jolt the GOP out of its ideological rut, but they’re better than nothing. -- Ross Douthat



I don’t like Huckabee, and I don’t want him to do well, but both he and Paul drive different parts of the establishment crazy and could throw the entire race into disarray, which would be a good thing for many reasons. -- Daniel Larison [Huckabee] and McCain seemed like the authentic and comfortably principled candidates, and Huck was witty and quick on his feet as well. -- Peter Lawler



Huckabee seemed by far the most congenial candidate. Paul is much clearer; McCain soared tonight, in my view. -- Andrew Sullivan

This isn't any kind of representative sample, but it is a fascinating cross-section of a bunch of people all generally on the 'right' but with profound differences amongst them. Fascinating, that is, because on the basis of these observations some possible facts emerge:

(1) McCain isn't fading anytime soon, though he'll only win if the others kill each other off;

(2) Huckabee is for real because he has a real constituency -- Fred Thompson's plus Gersonites;

(3) The Ron Paul wing(s) of the Republican Party are now irreversibly present in GOP politics;

(4) Mitt and Rudy maintain their death grips on one another at their peril.

As I suggested some time ago, it's the Huck-Paul exchange on honor that really captures the major fissure in this race, in the GOP, and probably in the country -- and it runs right through both parties. (An amazing matchup from a dependent-variable/independent-variable perspective would be Huck and Obama -- both therapeutic candidates arguing over whether it's more therapeutic to bring the troops home to maintain our sense of honor or keep them there to maintain our sense of honor.) David Darlington agreed on Sept. 6:

I'm with James Poulos: FDT matters only to the extent he influences the line between Huckabee and Paul, the most important line in the GOP race this time around.



The big question to me now seems to be who's the anti-Huckabee, other than Ron Paul? It's not Fred; it's not Mitt (though he has time to turn that around); it's not McCain, because of the war thing and the nobility thing; and it sure as hell ain't Rudy, Huckabee's evil twin. As you can see, this poses a problem for people who want to elect a Republican president who isn't a Gersonite. Shockingly the choice would seem to come down to Mitt Romney or Ron Paul. And if Mitt can't get torture right, the anti-Huck crowd will remain fatally uncomfortable with him and split between McCain, who wouldn't know therapy if you strapped him to the couch, and Paul, who's the anti-McCain on the war. It ain't pretty.

Lots more to say but I'll pause now and ruminate for a while.