“I’m the player to be named later.”*

by dday

I really want to thank Digby for letting me play in the big sandbox for a few days. With a week out before Iowa, we’re in this somewhat-unprecedented situation of it being an incredibly important news week even though nobody is paying attention. But that’s OK, because Iowa apparently doesn’t matter on the Republican side, or so our media overlords have been slowly and subtly telling us.

I’ve seen Big Media theories that a Huckabee win in Iowa helps Giuliani, that it helps McCain, even the bizarre notion that it helps Romney. Here’s a standard example of the genre from that fount of conventional wisdom, Hardball.

Let‘s take a look; here‘s the CNN poll right now in New Hampshire, on the Republican side. Romney leads with 34 percent. McCain is second, but pretty far back at 22. Rudy‘s down there at 16, Huckabee at 10. James, it seems to me that for McCain to do what he said he wants to do and told us he would do on the program tonight, he needs a break. It‘s like one of those NFL playoffs. He needs Huckabee to knock off Romney in Iowa so he can knock off Romney up here.

JAMES PINDELL, “BOSTON GLOBE”: I think that‘s right. I think for all of the Republican candidate scenarios, besides Romney, they need Huckabee to do well in Iowa so Romney can‘t run the table. New Hampshire has been his fire wall. He‘s consistently had this double digit lead for months.

MATTHEWS: You‘re talking Romney?

PINDELL: Yes.

MATTHEWS: That explains why John McCain, who was on the show on the Straight Talk Express about a half hour ago, was talking up what a nice guy Huckabee is.

So, the set-up here is that a Huckabee win in Iowa helps every Republican but Mike Huckabee, because the self-elected elites of the conservative movement have decided they can’t have a genuine theocon leading the party (somebody tell the voters). And so the wishes of this mythical Heartland that the traditional media has built up over the past several years are dismissed. That’s where the real America is, but they can’t actually have their choice mean anything, that would upset the balance of nature.

And this has manifested itself in a wave of double standards, particularly with respect to the infamous “floating cross” ad. Glenn Greenwald had an excellent post yesterday contrasting Huckabee’s subliminal ad with John McCain’s entirely liminal ad featuring the cross.

…here is the Christmas ad from John McCain, which features not a subliminal cross arguably lurking in the background, but instead, an explicit one drawn in the sand, serving as the centerpiece of the ad, and expressly referenced — twice — by the political candidate, whose face lingers wistfully next to the cross for 10 of the ad’s 30 seconds…

Yet the reverent reaction to McCain’s ad could not have been more different than the one provoked by Huckabee’s. Chris Wallace said: “That McCain ad is so powerful. You find yourself tearing up when you see that, obviously.” Obviously. A clearly moved Fred Barnes concurred with the only word that was needed: “Indeed.” Mort Kondracke gushed: “I think it was a great ad, and it had a religious overtone to it. . . . it should remind religious [voters] that there is another candidate in the options besides Huckabee.”

In what conceivable way could Huckabee’s ad, containing (arguably) a “subliminal” floating cross, constitute some grave breach of theological propriety, while McCain’s overt appeal to the cross in his political ad is some sort of inspiring, perfectly appropriate message?

Because McCain is a mavericky maverick who can do no wrong, and Huckabee is a kooky preacher who wants to raise our taxes and force us all into Bible study.

So watch for this over the next several days, the de-emphasizing of Iowa and the desperate desire for a comeback McCain narrative to emerge. This could well be the way it plays out, but the Beltway establishment is certainly giving it more than a nudge.

* Bull Durham is a better movie to quote than to watch. Discuss if you wish.

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