Projections by Fox News as of 8: 50 p.m. Iowa time were for the Democrats: Obama…37%; Edwards…30.9%...Clinton…29.68%.

For the Republicans: Huckabee…34%;; Romney…25%; Thompson…14%; McCain …13%...Giuliani…11%....Paul…10%.

I will assume these numbers hold or at least aren’t turned upside down by some quirk. If so, I want to take the Democrats first because the numbers will affect the Republican choice ultimately as well. We must remember that all along, Republicans have been facing the specter of 2008 being a variant of 1974 after Watergate. But the rise of Barack Obama gives us the chance to forestall that calamity.

That is because, given the makeup of the Democratic party today, Obama runs as very-very strong chance of taking the Democratic nomination. The reason I have been writing so tediously (to some people’s minds about McCarthy and Humphrey, is thanks to John Powers’ suggestion.) By suggesting the comparison he started me thinking in long-range scenario terms. The year 1968 was the year that the once strong Democratic party was riven into two from which it never recovered. You may remember that McCarthy mobilized the latent peace radicals within the party and while he lost them temporarily to Bobby, after Bobby’s death McCarthy waited until the very last minute before very tepidly endorsing Humphrey for president—which gained him approval from the movement. Then came the so-called McGovern commission which authorized a complete rewrite of the Democrats’ convention rules and quotas were established which guaranteed a changeover from the old pols, labor bosses and urban mayors who so wisely ran the party contra ideologically from FDR through Kennedy and to Johnson.

From that time on, the Democratic party has been in the hands of extremists we know and love today. The fact that no Democrat can espouse the pro-life position nationally, no Democrat can support winning the Iraq War (case history: Joe Lieberman), shows you what has become of the once great party. And the nomination of Barack Obama will continue down the McGovern path. It has to. There is no way out for Obama if he is to assuage the dominant majority of his party.

This eventuality changes the dynamics for the Republicans. As many know, the man I think should be president is Mitt Romney. But he is the man who should be hired for president. The Democratic party seems to have changed this. The logical man to oppose Obama on the Republican side is his opposite number in many ways—a war hero, a man who has committed himself to winning the Iraq War: John McCain. For if the Democratic vote in Iowa holds, it has certified two people as logical opponents: Barack Obama who deserves the custodial control of the Democratic party given what it is today—a peace party, a party less concerned with the patriotic effort of supporting a war to victory, a pro-abortion party, a party given to tax hikes…the alternative should be John McCain, the opposite. I have confidence that the American people will choose the right candidate for president—although they will add to Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

Now about the Republican winner in Iowa—Mike Huckabee. I don’t think Huckabee will get the Republican presidential nomination. First his strengths. While the media like to say it is because he ties in the evangelical crowd, he does much more than that. His great strength is that he has spanned the evangelical vote and the blue-collar, small town, Main Street vote. For instance, he is a minister who doesn’t mind telling a raw story about Bill Clinton/s hound-dog sexual history on Jay Leno as he did last night. Did you see it? Leno commented that both Huckabee and Clinton are from the same town—Hope, Arkansas. He asked if Huckabee knew Clinton in Hope when they lived in that small town. I don’t have the script right here but Huckabee said; No, you see Bill Clinton only lived in Hope, Arkansas six years before he moved. He called himself The Man from Hope because it wouldn’t do, since he moved to another town, to call himself The Man from Hot Springs!

The largely secular crowd erupted. He told a story and got away with it that Ronald Reagan would have feared telling. That is the measure of Huckabee’s strength. He’s far from the preacher type we remember from the heydays of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Huckabee is a man’s man, a blue-collar guy. His great strength would be as a veep candidate with McCain. Because he espouses things country club Republicans don’t—and which, frankly, I don’t. He is for “fair trade” by which he means reciprocity, penalizing foreign countries with tariffs the same way some do us. He is for spending more on “compassionate things” which increasingly small town America is. I am enough of a pragmatist to want to see Republicans elected so his views would be acceptable and bind into the warp and woof of the Republican message. All but one.

That is his Fair Tax. Concocted originally for the Church of Scientology, Tom Cruise’s church, who used it to try to retaliate against the IRS for punishing it, the Fair Tax is a loony idea. But if Huckabee runs for vice president he will have to shelve his tax plan in favor of whatever McCain wants. That would be a great solution. In some ways, McCain would be better suited to running with Romney who with his $600 million plus could bail out the improvident Republican party. But McCain despises Romney and vice versa. It might be better to run with Huckabee.

A few words need to be said about Rudy Giuliani. If, God forbid, another attack from terrorists came to our shores, there could well be an emotional stampede to Rudy for we know how he behaves in a crisis, something we only know about John McCain. Barring this happening, my view about Rudy is just about the same as my idea of Eddie Vrdolyak. I have loved Eddie for his unconventional fun, his bright mind, his numerous scrapes where he outwitted fate, his great gift of humor. I have always told Eddie I stood with him in his many difficulties and that’s right. But with Eddie there are always more and more difficulties. He is a brilliant multi-millionaire who can and does make a prosperous law business go by his acuity of intellect. Yet somehow don’t you always know that when there’s trouble in Cicero, there’s always Eddie? His law license suspended for some infraction—but it’s always Eddie?

Rudy started with a whole lot of baggage but when the public eyes were on him favorably for the presidency…and emotionally I was with them…there was more. Bernie Kerik: where did he come from? Where did Rudy’s law firm get the name of a priest accused of fooling around with minors to hire for a top-rated job? When have we last known someone who met his third wife while cheating on his second (I am quick to separate this truism from Eddie V. who is a renowned and respected family man, loyal husband and great father—but I’m talking about Rudy now). When have we known someone who takes a cell-phone call from his third wife and talks volubly to her in the midst of his speech to the National Rifle Association while the members stirred uneasily and embarrassedly in their seats? We now know that the money the NYPD paid to guard the mayor when he went a-courting his future wife no. 3 in the Hamptons was paid back. But now there’s the story that Rudy had her “protected” by the NYPD when they were dating. When will it end? Never, that’s the fact. And I’m sick of it. Rudy will stick on to the end, after which he will continue to make millions on the lecture circuit and in his law firm and I say God bless him. But I think that while he was once viable, the Kerik thing especially got to him and he’s going to move down the ladder slowly.

I must say I was more interested in Rudy before Big Jimbo came out in his Thompsonesque grandeur…the guy who fell asleep as the auditor watchdog while the two thieves looted Hollinger…the guy who appropriated much of the bonus money Winston & Strawn partners deserved to pay “pro-bono” for his corrupt pal George Ryan…the guy who so cravenly—heedless of the fact that it sullies his own previously brilliant public service reputation by escorting the crooked old curmudgeon to the jailhouse in his limousine. Now the guy who wants to put taxpayers as owners of Wrigley Field. Has he no shame? Well, believe you me, Jim Thompson doesn’t do Rudy a bit of good in Illinois or anywhere else.

I think Iowa will spell the end of the most boring candidate I have ever seen, although he may be a nice guy—Fred Thompson. I think it might well be the end of the most awful demagogue we have seen since Huey Long, John Edwards. Hillary will stay in and fight to the last. I would prefer her to Obama but I doubt seriously if she can do it given the nature of the Democratic party.

As far as Ron Paul is concerned, his 10% was about what I figured he’d get in Iowa. What he has to do now that the focus swings east is to make a strong pitch to finish second somewhere, using his anti-war rhetoric to get liberals to cross over. But Obama made Paul’s job very-very tough.

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Thomas F. Roeser is chairman of the editorial board of The Chicago Daily Observer.