Presidential Diary: Romney wins conservative straw poll, Hillary leads GOP in Iowa

• Clinton ahead in Iowa
  

The latest wave of SUSA polls are showing quite exciting results for Hillary Clinton, who leads all Republicans in Missouri, leads all but one who she ties in Ohio, edges Rudy in Kentucky and is even competitive in Alabama. Today, SUSA came out with its latest poll from Iowa, which has Clinton ahead against all Republicans:

• She runs closest to Rudy Giuliani and McCain. She beats them respectively 48%-43% and 49%-44%.
  
• Against Thompson and Romney, she leads 50%-42%.
  
• It's 51%-41% against Huckabee, 52%-36% against Ron Paul.
• SUSA did not poll Obama and Edwards, but it did survey a Rudy-Al Gore showdown. Gore wins 51% to 42%.

Things are not looking rosy for Republicans. Remember Iowa voted for Bush in 2004. Though we should say things are pretty much what they were a month ago: Here's the SUSA poll from Iowa that came out in September. Democrats won all their match-ups then too by comparable margins.

• Social Conservatives like Huckabee, Romney

Here's the situation. Social conservatives hate Rudy Giuliani, and want to oppose him. They love Mike Huckabee, but are afraid they will not get anywhere with him considering how far down Huckabee is in organization, fundraising, and support. So they have to coalesce around Mitt Romney, recently converted to their cause.

The Family Research Council was hosting its Value Voters forum this week-end, and held a straw poll to close it off. The results showed just how divided the social conservative vote is between Huckabee and Romney. The latter came out on top 27.62% to 27.15% (1595 to 1565) -- an extremely close result. But Romney's edge entirely came out of online voting. Of those who voted on site (about 950), 51% voted for Huckabeee and 10% for Romney. Rudy Giuliani predictably fared very poorly with 1.85% of the vote, not that far from Hillary's 0,09%! Fred Thompson did better but still got a disappointing 9.77%. Talk about the Republican base being dissatisfied with its leading candidates.

Before the voting, the candidates delivered their speeches. None was more closely watched than Rudy Giuliani's, who has to neutralize the hostility of conservative leaders. And he was clearly attempting to do just that: "Please know this, you have nothing to fear from me. I have trouble with those who are trying to make me an activist for liberal causes. If you believe that, please read any editorial in the New York Times." Note: Giuliani did not field a call from his wife this time. Marc Ambinder reports the attendees did not warm up to Giuliani, but FRC president Tony Perkins (one of the main anti-Giuliani figures) had some positive things to say -- for the first time.

Huckabee three everything he had in the speech, displaying his social conservatism. He compared abortion to the Holocaust. And he took a direct hit at Romney's flip-flops on social issues: "It’s important that a person doesn’t have more positions on issues than Elvis had waist sizes." But all in all, Romney is emerging as the choice of the Religious Right. The stream of steady endorsements keeps flowing -- yesterday it was a prominent social conservative from South Carolina.