Mike Huckabee, in the Des Moines Register this morning:

After consulting with many of our Iowa volunteers and supporters, as well as key activists whose opinion we value, I have decided to forgo taking part in the Iowa straw poll — or any other straw poll — and will instead focus our campaign’s attention and resources on the Iowa caucuses.

A lot of folks will look at a former Iowa caucus winner skipping the straw poll and conclude that the straw poll is effectively kaput. They will argue, with some justification, that the experiences of past winners Michele Bachmann, Phil Gramm, Pat Robertson, etc., indicate that winning the straw poll doesn’t mean much on caucus night. Of course, it’s not to say the reverse is true; performing poorly in the straw poll doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll do well on caucus night.

Huckabee and Jeb Bush, and perhaps additional candidates, will claim that they intend to compete and compete hard to win Iowa, but that they don’t care how they finish in the straw poll.

Whether or not people like the straw poll, somebody’s walking out of Boone on August 8 with a “[CANDIDATE] WINS” headline and, presuming Rand Paul does about as well as his father did four years ago, somebody out of Huckabee, Scott Walker, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Ben Carson, and maybe Marco Rubio is walking out with, say, 5 to 10 percent of the straw-poll vote. It’s not fatal, but it hurts. Those sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-place finishers are going to be left insisting that they’re going to be serious players in Iowa, even though they were the first choice of only about one in ten or one in 20 GOP activists who participated. Losers in Boone are going to leave with some skepticism — or as I said yesterday, a troubling rattle in the engine right at the moment the car needs to accelerate. They’re going to be insisting, “I’m a conservative candidate who will energize conservatives . . . just not these particular conservatives over here.”

I hear some complaints that “all the straw poll does is measure which campaign is best at bussing in its supporters.” Yes! And if you’re a good presidential candidate with a good presidential campaign, you should be able to do that! What do you think the caucus is, other than an effort to get as many people as possible to say you’re their first choice, and get them to show up at a particular place and time and say so?

Can we all agree that if you don’t win Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina, you have a much more difficult path to the nomination? Because of the independent-heavy, less-evangelical electorate of New Hampshire, if you’re a social conservative, you have to perform well in either Iowa or South Carolina. Can you pull a Gingrich and win South Carolina after “meh” finishes in the preceding states (fourth in Iowa, fifth in New Hampshire)? Sure, but it’s difficult.