Iowa's Holy War

DES MOINES, Iowa Dec. 19, 2007 — -- Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has just landed in Des Moines and he's surveying the enormous plush black bus that will be taking him on a 15-city tour of the state.

It's decorated with a huge picture of him.

"It's strange," Huckabee says. "Kind of like riding in a bread truck and you're the bread."

Underneath his gigantic photograph it reads: "Mike Huckabee. Faith. Family. Freedom."

And faith is no small reason for Huckabee's success in the Hawkeye state, where he now holds a commanding lead among likely Republican caucus-goers, who will cast their votes in just two weeks.

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leading Huckabee narrowly among the 80 percent of caucus-goers who don't care about Romney's Mormon faith.

But among the 20 percent who say Romney's Mormonism makes them less likely to vote for him, Huckabee's lead is so overwhelming he now leads Romney overall by eight points, 35 percent to 27 percent.

Does it concern Huckabee that one of the reasons for his surge in the polls is what can be seen as intolerance of Mormonism?

"I don't know that it's intolerance," the Baptist minister tells ABC News.

Then he stops himself and makes the first point he wants to make: "First of all, I don't think whether a person's a Mormon or is Baptist or is Jewish, I don't think that has anything to do with whether they would be a good president."

Huckabee continues, "I think what people ought to look at is whether their record is consistent. How did they get where they are? Do they really truly represent that guy out there who says, when he's putting his family around the table at dinner, 'There's my president, I'm watching him on TV, he understands me. He understands what I'm dealing with. And he's going to make a decision based on how it's going to affect me, not how it's going to affect him.'"

Does it bother Huckabee that unwillingness to vote for a Mormon is one of the factors helping him?

"You know, it's not something that I agree with," Huckabee says. "But I agree with the final outcome. I just have to believe that there's still a reason that a lot of people are connecting with me and I don't think it's religion."

Romney today told reporters that "there will always be people who don't understand my faith terribly well, and people who will make a decision on the basis of familiarity with a faith."

But he said he believes "the great majority of Iowans will choose the nominee of our party based on their experience and their vision, and their leadership and are not going to make a decision based on what church they go to."

Romney adds: "There will always be exceptions to those things."

Tensions are high between Romney and Huckabee, with the former Massachusetts governor mentioning Huckabee at almost every campaign stop, calling him "liberal," and assailing his record on taxes, immigration, and crime.

"The dog doesn't bark at a parked car," Huckabee says. "So the reason that we're getting this is because people say, 'This guy's going to run away with the election if we don't stop him.' So what do they do to stop me? Distortions. Untruths. Desperate attacks."

Asked if he and Romney fighting might not create an opening for a third candidate, Huckabee smiled. "I don't plan to fight with him. He's throwing punches and I'm saying Merry Christmas."

Huckabee's "Merry Christmas" TV ad -- in which he invokes the name Christ possibly for the first time ever in a broadcast ad by a presidential candidate -- was viewed by some of his opponents as a blatant attempt to remind evangelical voters, who comprise nearly 40 percent of GOP caucus-goers, that he's one of them.

"I don't think we've ever had an election as close to Christmas," Huckabee explains. "We've all been struggling with, 'How do you campaign so close to Christmas?' And one thing we chose to do, we weren't going to fill people's mailboxes up with a bunch of poison mail. Because most people go to the mailbox and they want some nice comfortable Christmas cards that say, 'Peace on Earth, Goodwill towards Man,' not 'Here's a hammer, let's crack this fellow's kneecaps.' I mean, it's unbecoming."

"It was honestly an attempt to change the tone of the campaign," he says. "If I invoke the name Jesus Christ in profanity nobody would think a thing."

A previous Huckabee TV ad characterized him as a "Christian Leader," prompting Romney to say in Iowa on Dec. 14, "Gov. Huckabee, in running an ad that says Christian leader, is clearly calling attention to his faith and I don't know that that's been done before in recent American history where someone advertises their faith."

Huckabee says that nonreligious voters support him as well and suggests his success is because voters identify with him beyond faith.

But he clearly sees his success in terms of his cultural differences with Romney, a wealthy son of privilege supported by many in the Republican establishment, who has outspent every other Republican candidate.

"More Americans grew up like I did than grew up in a world where they were born on third base, got up, and thought they hit a triple," Huckabee says. "Life is a struggle for most Americans. And I think when I share my own personal pilgrimage to be here, people recognize, 'Hey that's me. That's me.'"

His success in the ABC News poll, Huckabee says in another reference to Romney, is "a testament to the people of Iowa who, despite the fact that we've been outspent 20-to-1, are rallying to our campaign. What an affirmation that the election process is still alive ... that the average American can have an effect and it's not just controlled by a handful of special people in the Wall Street-to-Washington axis."

"It's a good position to be in," he says as the "Huckabus" approaches a mall where reporters are packed like paparazzi awaiting a starlet. "Having been in the back of the pack for so long, there's a saying that only the lead dog gets a change of scenery. And it's kind of nice to see the scenery."

John Berman and Matt Stuart contributed to this report.