Amid much sneering over at The Corner, Rich Lowry is talking some sense about what happened in Ames this weekend. "As for Huckabee," Lowry says, "he's not going to be a top tier candidate, but he's going to be a big factor in Iowa." I agree. Huckabee's still a very long shot to win the nomination, but he's going to have a lot of say over who wins Iowa. That's particularly true if, as Lowry suggests, Sam Brownback decides to exit the race rather than split the social conservative vote. I noted on Saturday that the combined Huckabee-Brownback tally edged out Romney's vote total. Another point to make is that the absence of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani on Saturday only makes the result more compelling for Huckabee, not less. Just ask yourself who Giuliani and McCain are likely to draw votes from: the formerly moderate governor of Massachusetts with questionable conservative bona fides, or the obviously conservative, devoutly pro-life former governor of Arkansas? I think it's pretty clear that adding McCain and Giuliani to the mix hurts Romney, not Huckabee. On the other hand, it wouldn't shock me if neither of the other top-tier candidates contested Iowa given the prominence of conservatives there. As for the point I made about the press's early romance with Huckabee, you can read no further than today's Adam Nagourney front-pager to see what I mean. The effect of this kind of coverage is hardly going to be trivial. Finally, for some of the best on-the-ground reporting about the goings-on in Iowa, I'd strongly recommend our friend Garance Franke-Ruta, who's blogging these days over at the Iowa Independent site. Garance has a couple of smart posts on the left side of the homepage. Her item on the influence of the Fair Tax advocacy group Saturday is especially sharp. --Noam Scheiber