Click above to watch Sean Wilentz, the author of our new cover story examining how Bush destroyed the Republican party, lay out exactly how the president did the deed — from transforming himself from a compassionate conservative into a right-winger to Dick Cheney to Hurricane Katrina.

[Video: Eric Helton]

The smart money — not to mention the latest polls — gives an edge to Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee in tonight’s Iowa caucuses.

But take a couple hundred thousand Midwesterners, pack them into gyms and libraries and town halls on a frigid Iowa night, add a heaping measure of peer pressure to the equation, and, well, anything can happen.

Here are five unlikely results you that shouldn’t be shocked to see when the final precinct tallies come in:

1) John Edwards Wins Going Away

No one in presidential campaign history has ever worked a state like John Edwards has worked Iowa. No one. But for a brief hiatus for the 2004 general election, Edwards has been campaigning there non-stop since early 2003. He’s answered more questions from more voters at more diners and summer cookouts — in every last corner of the state — than Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama combined. (more…)

The Fred Thompson moment, if there ever was one, is already passed. It’s strange how passed-the-sell-by-date his candidacy already feels. A lazy-man’s John McCain to start with, I can’t see Hollywood Fred catching fire… or really even sending off sparks.

But his candidacy is fantastic news for Mr. 9/11. And here’s why:

The under-the-radar candidacy of Flip Romney has actually been doing very well for itself. He’s the frontrunner in Iowa. And New Hampshire is literally his back yard. He’s no favorite in Dixie, largely because of his heathen LDS religion. But talking with religious leaders, in particular the Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptists’ political arm, Mitt’s Mormonism is a lot more tolerable than Rudy’s rocky personal life.

So fast forward to whenever it is that these ever-accelerated primaries and caucuses get going: Mitt takes Iowa and wins New Hampshire running away. Without Thompson in the race, Mitt stood a pretty decent chance of capturing South Carolina too. With that kind of momentum, it’s not hard to imagine Romney up on the podium in Minneapolis accepting the GOP nomination.

But that dream bites it with Thompson in the race. I’m not sure he’ll convince the hard-core religious right of any deeply held religiosity. But his Southern style and wit will make him very hard to beat in the Palmetto state. And a win by Thompson in South Carolina would substantially muddy the electoral waters going into Tsunami Tuesday on Feb. 5.

Instead of a media narrative about Mitt The Unstoppable, you’re going to have the pundits anxiously anticipating how Rudy the social moderate is going to fare in the friendly, delegate-rich contests of California, New York and Illinois.

In basketball terms, Fred sets the pick on Mitt, and Rudy rolls to the lane for what is suddenly a much easier shot at the nomination. Rudy’s still clumsy enough to clank it off the rim. But if he loses it won’t be Fred Thompson’s fault.

Rolling Stone recently sat down with anti-tax crusader and key Karl Rove ally Grover Norquist — head of Americans for Tax Reform — to handicap the Republican frontrunners from the perspective of an economic conservative. Norquist finds a lot to like among RudyMcRomney, and believes that the supposed veto powers of James Dobson and Pat Robertson in the GOP nominating process have been wildly overstated.

Rolling Stone: Much has been made that the frontrunners may have trouble clearing the bar with religious “values voters.” What’s your assessment?

Grover Norquist: What brings social conservatives to the Republican party is not some list of 20 things that James Dobson would like to see. It’s a much lower threshold. Social conservatives are best understood as a parents-rights movement. They don’t like guys throwing prophylactics at their kids in public schools. They don’t like their faith being made fun of, they want to be able to send their kids to private schools or home school. They are worried about raising their kids in their own faith and being left alone. On the abortion issue, pro-lifers need the same thing the chamber of commerce wants: serious judges. If you promise them that, credibly, you can have their support.

And each of the Republican candidates passes that threshold.

You can make the argument that some candidates would be more enthusiastic about going further on the social conservative agenda, and some may well excite the leadership of the social conservative movement, but I don’t believe that it moves votes. Take a look at how McCain and Giuliani and Romney are polling. Who are the three top guys? Pat Robertson sees two pagans and a Mormon. (more…)

Why people write fiction, I have no idea.

You’ve got to read this anti-immigrant resolution from a Republican politician in Utah:

Resolution opposing Satan’s plan to destroy the U.S. by stealth invasion

Whereas, “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” (Revelation 12:9)

Whereas, in order for Satan to establish his “New World Order” and destroy the freedom of all people as predicted in the Scriptures, he must first destroy the U.S. There are ways to destroy a nation other than with bombs or bullets. The mostly quiet and unspectacular invasion of illegal immigrants does not focus the attention of the nation the way open warfare does, but is all the more insidious for its stealth and innocuousness. (more…)

There’s really not much to talk about. The debate felt like watching live versions of the ten candidates’ websites. No fireworks. Not even interesting flash animation.

But, Hey, did you hear about that Reagan guy? He sure was an optimist. City on a hill and all that.

If you just parachuted onto this planet I don’t think you could have picked out the frontrunners from this crowd.

A couple also-rans were self evident:

Tancredo seemed lost. For a single issue candidate he never seemed to get around to really talking about his signature issue. Which is immigration, by the way.

Tommy Thompson leapt at the chance to call for civil rights violations — firing people for being gay? A-OK — and otherwise failed to impress … other than with his expansive vocabulary.

Ron Paul, I suppose, gets points for standing up for true limited government, but he really could take some fighting lessons from Mike Gravel. These are crazy making times for libertarians as well as progressives. He was just too Mr. Rogers to get anyone’s juices flowing even when he talked about defending habeus corpus and killing the IRS.

McCain: He hit wasteful Washington spending pretty hard, but pulled his punches against Giuliani, making up some wierd story about how his dig about how police and firemen should be on the same radio frequency wasn’t a critique of Giuliani’s failure to implement such a system in New York before 9/11. Reflecting his inherited political team, he debated just like Bush used to, as though he were reciting lines from a neocon Hemingway novel. Tiny sentences. About fear. And Iran. And the line item veto. His applause lines about surrender and the Democrats had less sting because his hard-linerism was out of step even with GOP guys like Brownback and Huckabee. And did you see him want to shit a brick when he was asked if he believed in evolution?

Giuliani: Seems to have abandoned the straight talk on his pro-choice stance, waffling on abortion rights, while also muddying his strict-constructionist view, allowing that such justices might uphold Roe. He’s supposed to be the superstar candidate, the celebrity counterterrorist. But he came off as particularly average tonight, and his answers to the question about if he regretted his relations black New Yorkers — all about poverty and welfare and crime — veered uncomfortably close to Imus territory.

Duncan Hunter: Came off as a credible candidate. He stole all of Tancredo’s thunder on immigration and his unabashed support of the military industrial complex reminded me more of the Reagan I remember than anyone else’s policy positions. He had the presidentiality that Romney’s supposed to project, and a conversationality about his platform that both McCain and Giuliani lacked. Could get some movement.
Mike Huckabee: He was funny and charismatic. His anti-CEO schitck — sticking up for 50 year old guys losing their pensions should win him points with the Lou Dobbs crowd. He out classed Romney for sure. Though I don’t know if America’s ready for a creationist. (That goes for you, too, Brownback. Even more reason to forget Tancredo.)

Brownback: I think he might actually have won the debate. He articulated his worldview in a gracious way. He’s such an extremist … but he didn’t come off as a hater. He was conversational and articulate. Strayed comfortably away from his talking points and had a great line about killing something — the AMT, maybe? — behind a barn with a ‘dull axe’. Again, without looking at the polls, you might think he and Hunter and Gilmore were big top-three.

Gilmore: Weird looking and a bit too intent on introducing himself — he was a Governor, a chief executive, or so he told us about 34 times — and he needed some powder on that forehead, but he — like Brownback — actually articulated a coherent conservative message, and projected confidence and gravitas and everything the jumpy Romney was missing.

Romney: What can you say? He sure looked pissed at the beginning when Chris Matthews took a little too much pleasure in pointing out the fact he’d drawn the far left position on the stage. And the questions about just about everything early on put him on the defensive, such that he couldn’t even slam a slow pitch softball: His mindless gushing about the great heart of the American people was saccharin to the point of distasteful. If he didn’t have so much cash, you’d have to put him in the third tier at this point.

I know, I know. You can’t read too much into a debate like this. It’s like handicapping an NBA playoff series after the first pregame shoot-around. Or trying to predict who’s going to be the team to beat in baseball after watching spring training batting practice.

But A-Rod impresses in batting practice. You can tell the difference between him and, say, Xavier Nady. Tonight the supposed GOP superstars blended in with the guys who are just struggling to make the team. And that’s great news for the big names on the sidelines.

I guess counting all that cash takes time. Barack Obama’s campaign has finally announced that it raised $25 million in the last quarter, with $23.5 million of that being dedicated primary money. On the face of it, this puts him a hair shy of Hillary Clinton. But it seems likely that he actually has more primary cash than Clinton, who has not disclosed what portion of her haul is earmarked for the general election.

UPDATE: ABC News is reporting that roughly $6 million of Hillary’s $26 million is non-primary, making Obama king of the finance hill on the Democratic side. Interestingly, he had more individual donors (100K+) than Clinton and John Edwards combined.
A roundup:

Hillary Clinton: $26 million

Barack Obama: $25 million

Mitt Romney: $23 million

Rudy Giuliani: $15 million

John Edwards: $14 million

John McCain: $12.5 million

Bill Richardson: $6 million

Sources have been telling me John McCain’s got money troubles, but this email to supporters yesterday sounds downright desperate. Pleading for max donations in advance of the FEC quarterly report is not what’ frontrunners do…

The Federal Election Commission filing deadline for the first quarter is March 31st. This FEC report will define our campaign’s financial and political strength at this crucial early stage. In today’s political environment, this is how the media will judge the success and momentum of a candidate – which is why need your help without delay.

Today, as one of my strongest supporters, I am asking you to make a special campaign contribution of $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000 or if possible, the full maximum amount of $2,300.