The immediate beneficiary of this is former Pawlenty, whose prospects in Iowa just increased ten-fold. There is no other solid social conservative in the race, he’s from a neighboring state and he’s got a ground game up and running. ~Jennifer Rubin

This is an odd claim. Obviously, Santorum is already in the race, and he is at least as much of a “solid social conservative” as Pawlenty. Pawlenty is from a neighboring state, so Huckabee’s absence raises expectations for him in Iowa even more, and despite having one of the more developed campaign organizations he continues to run even with Santorum and trails in polls behind one undeclared candidate who will harm Pawlenty’s chances considerably if she actually runs. That would be Michele Bachmann. In many respects, she would be the natural candidate to fill the gap left by Huckabee in Iowa. Like Huckabee in 2008, Bachmann has no realistic chance of winning of the nomination, but she could disrupt the race enough to help Romney as Huckabee helped McCain.

One reason that Pawlenty continues to struggle is that there is no demand out there for yet another blue-state governor to play the part of the cardboard cut-out “three legs of the stool” conservative. Pawlenty is auditioning to be the new Romney or Romney’s more acceptable replacement, but so far he hasn’t been persuading very many people that he should be taken seriously. Reports that he “battled to a draw” with an absent Romney in the first debate can hardly be striking terror in the hearts of Romney’s supporters. On the whole, Pawlenty has been arbitrarily granted the status of a first-tier candidate despite many indications that he does not yet deserve that status.

One thing that has been lost in all of the discussion of Romney’s health care liability is his past support for the TARP. This is one issue that could create problems for Romney with many primary voters, and it is a vulnerability that Pawlenty cannot exploit. Pawlenty also supported the bailout. Despite his later claims of opposition to bailouts, Pawlenty was a “reluctant” supporter of the TARP. Romney has absurdly claimed to be for the Paulson TARP, but against the Geithner TARP, but even Romney has not abandoned his previous support for bailouts quite as blatantly as Pawlenty.

As everyone has been saying, Iowa and South Carolina are now much more wide-open contests than they otherwise would have been if Huckabee had been in the race. Huckabee had won many of the post-Florida Southern primaries in 2008 as well, and those states will now be entirely up for grabs. The Huckabee vote is likely going to be split up among several social conservative candidates, and his absence from the race means that Romney won’t have to worry about the most significant and obvious anti-Romney candidate. Huckabee could still have some impact on the race if he chooses to endorse one of the non-Romney candidates, but he might not want to alienate any portion of his audience by playing favorites. Pawlenty, Bachmann, and Santorum all stand to benefit significantly, but their competition will likely prevent any one of them from breaking away from the pack.