GOP Dark Horse Feels His Oats

This story was written by CBSNews.com political reporter David Miller.

But the Baptist minister who wows audiences with a mix of down-home folksiness and traditional values has spent most of the year struggling to gain a foothold in the race for the GOP nomination.

Lately, however, there are signs that Huckabee may be catching on.

In the latest Iowa poll by the American Research Group, Huckabee is within striking distance of Mitt Romney, whom he trails 27 percent to 19 percent. Other polls in Iowa, host of the first statewide nominating contests on Jan. 3, also show Huckabee gaining ground.

And Huckabee was the star of a recent gathering of conservative Christian voters in Washington, where a majority of those in attendance said he was their preferred candidate for president - outpacing Romney 5-to-1. Internet ballots put Romney ahead of Huckabee in the overall count, but only by 30 votes.

But with Huckabee's apparent rise come many questions. In terms of dollars raised, he is near the bottom of the GOP field. He has no national finance director. In national polls and statewide polls other than Iowa, his support is often less than the margin of error. Rank-and-file social conservatives may like him, but the leaders of that movement are more pessimistic. And among fiscal conservatives, he is viewed with suspicion.

Yet it's hard to deny Huckabee is making headway. Perhaps the surest sign of that is that Romney has started to criticize him. In a recent interview with Iowa Public Television, the former Massachusetts governor chided Huckabee for wanting to give, he said, "special tuition breaks to the children of illegal immigrants."

But GOP strategist Tony Fabrizio says that while Huckabee is gaining traction, it's not clear that he's really a threat to Romney's first-place status in Iowa.

"Romney has an incredible organization and it may be by sheer force of weight that he hangs on," Fabrizio said. "Sometimes you can't substitute money for passion and enthusiasm. Huckabee has that, but Romney's organization is so embedded and so deep it might be tough for Huckabee to unseat him."

Second place in Iowa, however, might not be so bad. A strong finish there could give him a boost headed into primaries in New Hampshire and, in particular, South Carolina, site of the first southern contest on Jan. 19.

Getting there will not be easy. There is no guarantee that Huckabee's current rise will continue through the final stages of the Iowa campaign, during which his weak fundraising - he pulled in only $1 million between July and September of this year - could render him unable to keep up with the large spending expected of Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson.

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Political Players: CBSNews.com Interviews Huckabee

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"The best way to say it is a lot of those campaigns have spent an enormous amount of money hiring a lot more people than we have," Huckabee told reporters in an Oct. 22 conference call. "We have been frugal, and we make no apologies for that. We've used it very wisely and thoughtfully. We continue to add people to our staff. Other people have had to make layoffs and cut staff, and we haven't had to do that."

On paper, Huckabee's fundraising problems might be surprising. He won two elections in Arkansas, a historically Democratic state. He has been reliably conservative on nearly every issue, yet his language strikes a populist tone, making him sound like the "compassionate conservative" President Bush campaigned as in 2000. He even has a compelling personal story, having lost well over 100 lbs. during his time as governor and becoming an advocate for preventative health care.

But Andrew Dowdle, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, says high fundraising expectations would be at odds with Huckabee's background. "Arkansas is a smaller state and it's been a traditionally Democratic state," he said. "Even though there are moneyed interests for the Republicans, it's not like most states where the moneyed interests are going to be predominantly Republican."

However, Dowdle said Arkansas is not unlike Iowa, where Huckabee is performing best. Both are relatively small, mostly rural states, making them suitable environments for the kind of one-on-one, retail politics that doesn't require a lot of money and advertising. Republicans in both states tend to be conservative churchgoers who can spread word of a candidate they like among their congregations.

That makes a strong second-place finish, and maybe even an upset win over Romney in Iowa, a distinct possibility, Dowdle said. "If you look at a forum that would the most suitable for him and his traditional strengths, you couldn't ask for a better contest than Iowa for him," he said.

Iowa pollster Ann Selzer, who conducts the Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register, the state's largest newspaper, says her research shows the "Huckabee bounce" is genuine. "There seems to be an overall fit there on the conservative side, a fit in terms of tone and ethic," she said. "Especially on the born-again [Christian] side -- Romney still leads there, but Huckabee's performing well and surpassing Thompson. The question we have is how big that block will be on caucus night."

But for all of the promise Iowa holds, Huckabee's road after that contest is rocky. He polls in the single digits in New Hampshire, which appears likely to hold its primary less than a week after Iowa's contest, giving Huckabee very little time to take advantage of a strong finish in the caucuses. After South Carolina's primary, the campaign goes into overdrive with primaries in Michigan and Florida quickly followed by nearly two dozen states holding contests on Feb. 5.

Huckabee does not have a strong organization in these states, many of which demand high spending and TV advertising, particularly California.

"It is very, very tough to see a path to the nomination for him without a serious infusion of resources," Fabrizio said. "The free media ride is only going to take him so far. If he comes in second in Iowa, he'd have to come in second in New Hampshire and he'd have to win in South Carolina. There'd have to be that kind of momentum shift."

With the process already geared against Huckabee, it doesn't help his chances that there are some factions within the Republican Party actively working against him. In particular, fiscal conservatives, led by the anti-tax Club For Growth, have been critical of Huckabee's record while governor, claiming that he increased a number of taxes.

In a piece written for the conservative National Review, Club For Growth President Pat Toomey said Huckabee had compiled a "stunning record of big-government liberalism" and warned that his presence on the GOP ticket, as either president or vice president, "would hurt the party's prospects more than it helps."

Huckabee has said the Club's claims are distorted, saying many of the increases they cite were enacted by public referendum. While he supports replacing the income tax with a national sales tax - called the FairTax by supporters - Huckabee's record is not one of an ardent tax-cutter, and he has warned his fellow Republicans against being seen as a party of the rich and powerful.

"The stuff that the Club For Growth has put out has been so thoroughly debunked time and time again," Huckabee said. "The record itself is a good one and certainly that of a fiscal conservative. You balance your budget; you live within your means. Instead of just being an ideologue and focusing on taxes, what you focus on is that the people are getting what they pay for with their taxes and you're sensitive to the needs you've got to confront."

It also appears he has done little to persuade leaders of the Christian right to support him, even though he was enthusiastically received by attendees of the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit in Washington in October. FRC President Tony Perkins said Huckabee's outreach has been lacking.

"He's defined himself, kind of, as 'not your normal conservative,'" Perkins said. "That's been his mantra. We're not really sure what that means and he hasn't really spent time with the base developing that support. I think he may be taking it for granted."

Huckabee, in a press conference at the Values Voter Summit, said the support of such leaders is not integral to his presidential bid's success. "It could be that I might not have spent as much time dealing with them on a personal level," he said. "They were expressing their view of what they saw in the field. But there's a growing sense of coalescing in the movement, and I just hope I'm the one they'd like to coalesce around."
By David Miller