Washington is reeling from last night's Iowa caucuses. A loud and clear message was delivered, but whether it will be heard is yet to be seen. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee's huge victory can be attributed to two primary reasons. First, he is real and his style reflects it. He is engaging and he talks with people, not at them. He is a great campaigner; he is the communicator in this presidential election cycle. Second, evangelicals, dispirited by Republican indifference if not outright hostility to their concerns, cast their ballots for candidates who line up with them on their top priority issues (for example, all of the top five finishers contend that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be corrected). Significantly, the top two finishers on the Republican side, Huckabee and Romney, were also the top two finishers in the Values Voter Straw Poll at FRC Action's Washington Briefing in October. Four months ago the talk was that Rudy Giuliani was going to be the GOP standard bearer. The party establishment's push for Giuliani is an outright message to values voters that their issues will not only take a backseat, as they have in so many Republican administrations, but they will be thrown off the bus entirely. Iowa evangelicals' voting pattern says, "If that is the way we are viewed by the other members of the conservative coalition, we are going with one of our own whom we can trust on our issues." The road ahead will be filled with challenges, but one thing is clear: the values voter turnout has reshaped this presidential campaign in a very good way. On the Democratic side Barack Obama's victory last night sent a very similar message to a party that has grown accustomed to humoring its base. The message is: "Move over, we are taking the wheel." Like Huckabee, Obama comes across as real and he connects with his party's grassroots. On both sides, the next few months are going to be a contest between the party establishments and their respective bases. The presidential election will not be taking place in a vacuum; what happens here on Capitol Hill and in the White House is going to continue to influence this election. If each party continues to ignore the concerns of its core constituency, it will only fan the flames of change. More than any other election in recent time, this election has the potential to change the political landscape in America. One final note: there is less division on some issues in the land than our polarizing media often suggest. A Gallup survey that was released the day after Christmas and received little coverage reported that three in four Americans say that "family values" will play a role in determining their choice for president - for one in three Americans, "family values" are extremely important. Candidates who deny this fundamental "longing to belong" are the ones who are dividers, not uniters.
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