Video: Huckabee chairman Ed Rollins on victory and being blogged in Iowa Update: Partial transcript added

This may be the strangest victory speech I’ve ever seen. Huckabee campaign guru Ed Rollins seems like he really does want to punch someone’s teeth out, and any teeth will do. Here he spars with Chris Wallace on the Huckabee win, chides the pundits for dismissing their campaign and reacts to Amanda Carpenter’s odd eavesdropper blog post about Rollins having lunch with his wife earlier today.

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Stay with this clip all the way to the end for Brit Hume’s priceless take. Rollins is definitely the pit bull in the campaign right now, somewhat ironically working for the candidate who’s trading on the nice guy brand. Good dog, bad dog, I guess.

The clip starts after Wallace offers Rollins his congratulations for the big win.

Update: Depressing thought of the night. There’s little room to argue that Huckabee’s win wasn’t built on identity politics — he won decisively among voters who “share his values,” and Iowa’s GOPers are 60% evangelicals. On the other side, Obama beat Clinton across the board and among women, who ought to be her core. If she gets half the women’s vote, she wins. But she didn’t.

So identity politics played a decisive role on the GOP side, and much less of a role on the Democrat side. That’s a reversal in the way the two parties tend to think and choose their respective leaders.

Update: Michelle transcribed some of the fun parts.

CW: Ed, I’m not sure you’re aware of this, but you’re the subject of a blog on Townhall.com tonight. Someone says they overheard you eating at a restaurant called Winston’s. Let me ask you first of all, did you eat at a restaurant called Winston’s?

ER: I did and the tall, beautiful blonde that they were referring to is my wife. We snuck off to have a little lunch today and obviously when you have thousands and thousands of reporters covering it, there was no one else but one woman at another table and obviously she was the blogger…it was a private conversation between my wife and I…

CW: …It says you talked about going negative in South Carolina…do what you gotta do…

ER: …It was a private conversation…not for public consumption…and the reality is Mike Huckabee makes the decision in this campaign, I don’t…I don’t think [wife] expected to have our private lunch…

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Update:
“It’s not a pundit-driven party anymore.”

Update: Stray thoughts about Rollins. If Huck gets to the general election, Rollins may be a fun one to watch. Say what you will about him, but he’s no mouse. Huck can play nice all he wants but Rollins will be out there kneecapping whatever Democrats he thinks deserve it, and double that for journalists who cross him.

On the other hand, he’ll probably say something that gets him taken offline before Huckabee gets that far. He has a history of doing that sort of thing.

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