Iowa - Huckabee takes the lead

All those observers who saw Mike Huckabee's Iowa surge as a way to secure himself a VP spot on the ticket might have to revise and extend their remarks.

He just moved ahead of Mitt Romney in Iowa.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the Iowa caucus finds former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee with 28% of the vote, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney with 25% support, and everyone else far behind. National frontrunner Rudy Giuliani gets just 12% of the vote in Iowa at this time while former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson is the only other candidate in double digits at 11%.

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Compared to our prior survey, the trend is unmistakable—Huckabee has gone up and just about everybody else has gone down. Huckabee’s 28% support represents a twelve point increase from a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted earlier in the month. Romney is down four points while Giuliani and Thompson are each down three points from the previous survey.

I don't find this surprising at all. I have long believed that once religious conservative voters really considered their options, Huckabee would emerge as their natural choice.

When he finished a surprise second in the Ames Straw Poll, I wrote:

Huckabee could fizzle, but I suspect he won't. For religious conservatives, Huckabee, a Baptist Minister, is the real deal. For pragmatic Republicans, the second-place finish in Iowa gives him some "electability" street cred. It would not surprise me to see a whole bunch of people who barely knew his name on Friday jumping onto the back of Mike Huckabee's campaign bus in the weeks and months ahead.

And when Focus on the Family's James Dobson was reported to be considering endorsing Huckabee, I wrote:

Mike Huckabee is what John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson have been pretending to be, and what Rudy Giuliani can't even pretend to be. He is a socially-conservative Christian whose bona fides on the twin pillars of abortion and homosexuality are unassailable from the right-flank of the Republican Party.

It is likewise impossible to exaggerate how much of a relief a Dobson endorsement of Huckabee will be for rank-and-file Evangelical voters who have been distressed over having to choose from among the front-runners so far. They hate McCain, are extremely disappointed by Thompson, don't trust Romney, and would only vote for Giuliani as a protest against Hillary or Obama.

Mike Huckabee is one of them, and if Dobson really does come out in favor of the former Arkansas Governor, it will change the dynamic of the Republican primary contest.

Of course, it turns out that Evangelical voters didn't need any prompting from Dobson or anybody else. They reached their own conclusions.

Mr. Huckabee’s rise in Iowa — some recent polls now put him in a dead heat with Mr. Romney, who had led surveys for months — has been fueled by evangelical Christians, who believe Mormonism runs counter to Christian orthodoxy.

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Barbara Heki, 51, from Johnston, Iowa, who began volunteering for Mr. Huckabee over the summer, compared Mr. Romney to Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was dogged by accusations of flip-flopping when he ran for president in 2004. Nevertheless, Ms. Heki admitted that her evangelical faith also figured prominently in her choice.

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Danny Carroll, a former speaker pro tem in the Iowa House and Mr. Huckabee’s Iowa campaign co-chairman, said he was drawn to Mr. Huckabee in large part because of the way religion permeates the former Arkansas governor’s life. Mr. Carroll said he had reservations about Mr. Romney because of his more moderate past positions in addition to his religion, saying he was concerned about where Mr. Romney went for strength and wisdom.

“I think it just causes some uneasiness as to how somebody is going to respond when heavy responsibility is placed on them,” Mr. Carroll said. “I think the Christian would like to know that the person has a strong anchor and prays to the God of the Bible.”

And this, at least with respect to Huckabee v. Romney, is the key. Evangelical Christians consider the Mormon church to be a cult, and they are not going to vote for a Mormon. This is a factor that the mainstream press has been reluctant to explore at least until very recently. It is, frankly, not pleasant to consider the reality that religious bigotry might play such a large part in presidential politics.

And it is ironic of course, that Huckabee's faith-fueled surge just happens to coincide with Romney's recent vow to engage in religious discrimination against another minority group should he become president. He should have realized that weapon cuts both ways.

Live by the sword, perish by the sword, somebody said once.