Now that the annual “war on Christmas” is over, it’s time to get back to “real” politics - that is wasting time covering the 1st round of the Iowa caucuses for both parties. At least for the moment, the world comes to a halt, Pakistan’s chaos is on pause, and national news can wait. Sorry Paris and Britney.

So since the world is on pause for the next 24-48 hrs, I might as well talk about the Iowa caucus too.

As predicted, Huckabee won the Iowa caucus with well over 30% of the vote, while Mitt Romney, who spent over $5 million on attack ads across Iowa ended up conceding the 1st round to Mike Huckabee who spent five times less. Fred Thompson, the alleged big savior of the Republican party came in distant 3rd and John McCain who virtually ignored Iowa, came in 4th, right behind Thompson. Rudy was barely visible in the polls, since he doesn’t like the Iowans and spent no time there and they don’t like the cross-dresser liberal from NY either. So at least for now, we have Huckabee vying for the position of Pastor-in-chief and evangelicals gave it to him. Going into New Hampshire, however, won’t be easy, since the elites in the “establishment” - the real Republicans, don’t like him very much because he is too religious for their taste. As Kevin Drum puts it, the real conservatives aren’t supposed to care about religion, they are only supposed to pander to the religious base to get their vote.

More surprisingly is the strong showing of Barrack Obama who won the more complex Democratic Iowa caucus, garnering nearly 40% of the vote. John Edwards came in 2nd at 30% and the great “aura of invincibility” of Hillary was vincible at least on this night, coming in 3rd right behind Edwards. But don’t worry about her, Bill Clinton is already on the plane to New Hampshire, which is the next stop in 5 days, because he is not in it to lose. I meant she… Meanwhile, the actual experienced candidates, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd reportedly dropped out as they came in at 1% or less. Bill Richardson, the next candidate to drop out, came in a very distant 4th at 2%.

So at least for now, the mainstream news are swimming in this orgy of Iowa coverage, the political pundits are in business, the campaign managers and PR people are spinning their Iowa night into sensational stories for their candidates while the candidates themselves are practicing their next speeches to impress their supporters. And as is customary, somewhere amid all this party, the actual issues slowly float away from the mainstream view.