James Forsyth

Today’s Des Moines Register poll suggests that Barack Obama is on course for his dream result in Iowa. It has Obama at 32, Hillary Clinton at 25 and John Edwards at 24. A clear win in Iowa, with Edwards coming third, would set Obama up for victories in the subsequent contests in New Hampshire and South Carolina.  The Clinton and Edwards camps are, though, questioning the poll’s methodology which has huge turnout from independents pushing Obama over the top. Indeed, the silver lining for Clinton and Edwards is that the pressure is now on Obama to win. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee leads Mitt Romney 32 to 26 with John McCain in third.

The Democratic presidential contest is getting the lion’s share of the media coverage because the two main competitors in it are political superstars whose candidacies would be historic and because whoever is the Democratic nominee will start out as the favourite in 2008. But the Republic race is, perhaps, even more fascinating with the very future of the conservative coalition at stake. It is certainly more fluid with four Republicans—Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney—still having plausible paths to the nomination.   Romney (pictured) is the only Republican with a realistic chance of winning both Iowa and New Hampshire, the two crucial early contests. He is second in the polls in Iowa and has a narrow lead in New Hampshire.

Ahmed Rashid’s Washington Post column on what happens next in Pakistan is an absolute must read. As Rashid puts it, “The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has left a huge political vacuum at the heart of this nuclear-armed state, which appears to be slipping into an abyss of violence and Islamic extremism. The question of what happens next is almost impossible to answer, especially at a moment when Bhutto herself seemed to be the only answer.” The West would also do well to bear in mind Rashid’s warnings about the likelihood that this crisis could break Musharraf’s grip on power: “Musharraf may not survive the fallout of Bhutto's death. His actions have not been honorable, and none of the political opposition is willing to sit down with him.

The political fall-out in Pakistan is likely to centre around a letter that Benazir Bhutto wrote to Pervez Musharraf on her return home, demanding that in the event of her death three senior figures in the security services be investigated. The government has always dismissed the letter as merely Bhutto settling scores with her opponents, but in the aftermath of her death it takes on new importance even though Al Qaeda has reportedly claimed responsibility for her death. Already violence in Karachi has claimed five lives and shops belonging to the family of Mohammedmian Soomro, the current Prime Minister, have been torched in Jacobabad.

Coffee House will be quiet over Christmas itself. We’d like to wish you a very merry Christmas and thank you for reading and contributing. If you want a political giggle over the next few days, click here.

The Coffee House team are scattering to the four winds for Christmas so posting will be less regular than usual. You can keep up to date with all the latest news at The Telegraph. Have a very happy Christmas and thank you for helping to make Coffee House what it is.

If you want to get an idea of how great General Petraeus’s achievement have been in Iraq, consider this revelation from Time’s profile of him:  “At a Pentagon meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in December 2006, President Bush asked the Chiefs how many supported the idea of a surge — the deployment of more troops (which Petraeus would command) into Baghdad to secure the city and create the conditions necessary for a reconciliation of the various Iraqi political factions. The Chiefs were unanimously opposed.