John McCain and Hillary Clinton are being described this morning as the twin "come-back kids" thanks to their wins in New Hampshire.  Their victories keep the race open for multiple candidates.  Two contests so far have yielded four different winners among Republicans and Democrats combined.

The Huckabee momentum from the Iowa Caucus continued last night in New Hampshire with his strong third place showing.  The headlines will shout out praise for Clinton and McCain, but Huckabee's placing is actually more amazing as he continues to finish much higher than anticipated. 

In this political season it seems a consistent theme has been one of expectation.  The real winners have been those candidates who have exceeded expectations.  No one has done that better than Mike Huckabee.  He surged in the polls just a few weeks before the Iowa contest and ended up winning against Mitt Romney quite convincingly.  After polling just fifth or sixth just a few weeks ago in New Hampshire, Huckabee finished third and ahead of Rudy Giuliani in a state where Rudy actually showed up and did some campaigning.  The losers have been those who have finished below expectation - namely Fred Thompson overall, Romney in Iowa and now New Hampshire and Rudy Giuliani - well about everywhere so far.

John Ellis discusses the Huckabee momentum in an article at RealClearPolitics.com :

Iowa was grand for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, but New Hampshire was a bonanza. He cast his bread upon the waters there and though he finished a distant third, it was returned manifold. The one thing that Huckabee cannot afford, at this stage of the race, is head-to-head defeat. He needs at least two "strong" candidates in the field while he puts together the pieces of his Republican proletariat coalition.

What New Hampshire delivered last night was a revitalized Sen. John McCain, which makes Michigan a three-way race, which makes Gov. Huckabee's campaign there viable . . . Given a McCain surge and a Romney splurge, it's not hard to imagine a three-way split, with Huckabee doing surprisingly well in the collar counties around Detroit and drawing from the well of his base in the western and northwestern counties. Who knows, he might even win Michigan, which would set up South Carolina for a kill . . .  The net result of all of that will likely be a convincing Huckabee victory, which should solidify Huckabee's lock on the Southern primary states and enable his campaign to poach in border states, in the Midwest and in the Rocky Mountain States.

A strong Huckabee showing in Michigan and a convincing win in South Carolina would set up a showdown with former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in Florida, one that Huckabee could afford to lose. Indeed, he might even want to lose it, if only to fatten Giuliani up for his eventual slaughter on the altar of social conservatism. Again, the longer Huckabee faces two "not Huckabee" candidates, all of whom are alien or anathema to the GOP's core Sunbelt/Christian constituencies, the more likely it is he will eventually emerge victorious in the final showdown, wherever that might occur.

And if the results in the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary were not bonanza enough, Huckabee got the added boost of Senator Clinton's resurrection from the dead. What better to inflame the passions of Huckabee's more rabid partisans than the renewed prospect of Holy War against the hated Hillary. And what better way could there be to diminish the impact of McCain's revival than a bigger story burying his news.

Mike Huckabee continues to leverage the small funded but growing grassroots support he does have for maximum results.  He has been a master of capitalizing on "free media" always readily available for media interviews.  It seems like the more people that hear him speak candidly about the issues and his vision for America, the more his support grows.  While the New Hampshire race between Clinton / Obama and McCain / Romney has grabbed the headlines in the last several days, Huckabee has used his Iowa bounce to leapfrog into first place in the  national GOP Presidential polls. 

Written by Dan Davidson, StuckonHuck.com