Jonathan Bernstein has made very solid arguments that Michele Bachmann can’t win the Republican nomination, but he’s on much shakier ground when he says that she can’t possibly win the Iowa caucuses:

Compared to Huckabee, Michele Bachmann is an altogether different sort of candidate. Since 1972, no candidate in any way similar has run a competitive campaign. The only three members of the House who had plausible shots at winning—Mo Udall in 1976, Jack Kemp in 1988, and Dick Gephardt in 1988 and 2004—were all senior members with leadership positions, legislative accomplishments, or both. No, Bachmann belongs in a different category, with other sideshow acts who may attract attention but have no real chance to win the nomination. And even in allegedly crazy Iowa, those candidates rarely impress on caucus day.

We need to remember that Mike Huckabee was also widely regarded as a long-shot, no-hope candidate when he was running in 2007. The arguments against him seemed persuasive, and they were borne out over the course of the primary season, but Huckabee became the national figure he is today because of his victory in Iowa, which propelled him on to some success in other contests (mostly in the South) where he could also rally evangelical voters behind him. Despite being governor of Arkansas for 10 years, the conventional wisdom held that he couldn’t be taken seriously because his social conservatism was too extreme, his organization was lacking, and he couldn’t raise any money. In short, Huckabee was dismissed in much the same way that Bachmann is being dismissed now. Bernstein has a point that Bachmann is much less qualified to be President than Huckabee was or is, but that isn’t the same thing as saying that she is less electable in Iowa. The more we look at how Huckabee won in Iowa and compare it with Bachmann’s strengths, the more we have to take seriously the possibility that Bachmann could pull off the same surprise upset that Huckabee did.

After all, it wasn’t particularly because Huckabee was a multi-term state executive that Huckaee was able to ride a wave of evangelical caucus-goers to victory in 2008. Huckabee won because he could appeal directly to evangelical voters as someone who shared their beliefs and experiences and spoke their language. His lack of campaign organization was less important in Iowa, because he was able to mobilize informal networks of evangelical church-goers. As Sean Scallon’s TAC profiile of Bachmann explained, she comes from a similar religious background, she has a long record of social conservative activism, she has family roots in Iowa, and she spent part of her childhood in Waterloo.

When Huckabee started, he wasn’t all that well known outside of Arkansas. By comparison, Bachmann is probably among the best-known Republican members of Congress nationwide, and she already has a following and a significant fund-raising network in place. Her appearances in Iowa have been quite well-received among activists, and she is using many of the same themes that Huckabee used to build up his following in Iowa. This isn’t proof of Iowan “craziness,” but of Bachmann’s ability to appeal to the sorts of conservative activists she needs to win over if she is going to compete seriously and possibly win in Iowa.