Huckabee Talks Religion With GQ

ABC News’ Kevin Chupka Reports: GQ magazine may not be where you would expect to find an interview with a 52-year-old former Baptist minister from Hope, Arkansas; but if the man were Mike Huckabee, then you shouldn’t be surprised. 

Huckabee is quickly becoming used to being places he’s not expected to be, most notably at the top of the polls in Iowa, according to the most recent data from the Des Moines Register. 

The Republican candidate discussed Roe v. Wade, the legacy of the last president from Hope, Arkansas, and the Bush brand of "compassionate conservativism" that Huckabee seems to be following with GQ’s Ross Douthat for the January 2008 issue of the magazine. 

The balance of the interview, however, focused on religion.  It’s a topic that Huckabee is nothing short of an expert on, having been preaching since the age of 15. 

On the trail, he can’t go a day without at least one question about his faith.  "I’ve been given an unusual level of scrutiny. No candidate gets quizzed to the depth that I do about faith," Huckabee said.

When Mitt Romney’s name entered the discussion, Hucakbee complained, "He hasn’t gotten nearly as much for his Mormonism as I have for being a Baptist. I mean, I’ve never heard the kind of interviews with him that I got from Bill O’Reilly or Wolf Blitzer. No one’s just kept pressing and pressing and going into the details of his doctrine. Not that I’ve heard."

The discussion of religion lead the way to evolution, a hot button issue whenever Huckabee is in the room since he raised his hand at an MSNBC debate last May, acknowledging that he did not believe in it. 

He has since clarified his remarks, telling GQ when asked if voters had a right to know his true thoughts on the theory, "Only if I were saying that I would, as president, do everything I could to prevent the teaching of certain things. But I’m not. The president doesn’t choose eighth-grade textbooks in science. Those are school-board decisions," adding, "I think people should be exposed to evolution. They should be taught that, yes, this is the prevailing scientific view, but that there are others who happen to view things di­fferently."