No, I’m not going cut subsidies and ethanol initiatives. How could I? I just wanted to put in my pre-Holiday thoughts about our nation’s first vote’s winners and losers. Despite the fact that the tagline for the first “Alien Vs. Predator” movie keeps floating through my head, here’s my take [please keep in mind, that while I am not a professional prognosticator, I am just as inaccurate]:

Part 1: The Republicans - Huckabee will win, though it won’t be easy. McCain will do surprisingly well, better than he’s polling, better than he’s expecting, better than the tired ol’ guy in fact wants to do. Giuliani will settle for stealing Iowa’s toys and stuffing them back up the chimney to his waiting black sleigh. Romney will declare victory, though that victory will be ” getting out of there alive” (not unlike the humans in AvP, come to think of it). He’s looking ahead to New Hampshire anyway (which might not mean what he thinks it does, by the way, but that’s a story for another post…). Shortly after the caucus, Fred Thompson will announce that he’s entering the race. Ron Paul’s would-be voters will complain that “the Man” snuck into their dorms and unplugged their alarm clocks, causing them to miss the “votey thing.”

It won’t, as I said, be easy for Huckabee, though. Not only will he face increasingly nasty and sophisticated assaults from Romney, who will hammer away with his “Bring Him Down To My Level” strategy, but a panicky Republican Establishment will move heaven (which they don’t actually believe in) and Earth (a wholly owned subsidiary of GOPCO, Inc.) to bust Huckabee back down to “lovable also-ran.” Expect cryptically-named organizations like “Citizens for People” and “The Academy Institute” and “Arkansas Preachers for Truth” to appear and start muttering darkly about illegitimate Huckabuenos born to illegal housekeepers and whatnot. The point being not to really draw blood, of course, but just to dampen enthusiasm so that voter turnout is limited to the the most reliable and tractable of the party faithful.

I’m sure I’m not the first to point out that Huckabee represents the final scene in a bad film adaptation of “Frankenstein,” in which the monster (in this case, the evangelical voter base) lurches towards the doctor (the GOP), giant, powerful hands extended towards a scrawny throat, as the morally compromised scientist exclaims “Wait - no - I created you!”

It’s all so complicated at this point, what with the uncontrollable Huckabee and the “too mean to get actual votes” Romney and Giuliani, that the eventual nominee for the famously undemocratic Republican kingmakers might be… McCain. Or Thompson. Someone who even though they may not win, will meekly hand back the reins of the party when they’re done. Someone who will in fact gift them with the electoral triage that can best summed up by reversing the “Alien Vs. Predator” tagline: “Whoever Loses, We Win.”