Huckabee brings down the house in Iowa

By J. Patrick Coolican

Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007 | 6:54 a.m.

CEDAR FALLS, Iowa - The man of the moment in Iowa, the candidate with buzz and momentum, speaks fluently and passionately about education and health care, about preventive medicine and the wonders of art and music education.

When a cell phone rang during a speech, he joked that it was probably Vice President Dick Cheney asking if he wanted to go hunting.

And this candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, is a Republican.

Huckabee, a Baptist minister, is running second in some Iowa polls , and his trajectory continues upward following a second -place finish in the Iowa Straw Poll in August, in which he shocked many with his performance, given that he had spent almost no money to do it.

Every cycle or two has its man from nowhere. Last time, it was Howard Dean for the Democrats, and in 2000, it was Sen. John McCain for the Republicans.

Huckabee's rise is linked, in part, to his salt-of-the-earth charm.

After a Wednesday education forum in which he came across as knowledgeable but not show-offy or pedantic, Cindy Ziegenhorn echoed the comments of many Iowans: "He's one of us."

Ziegenhorn offered an anecdote that has become word-of-mouth legend here: When the governor's mansion in Arkansas was being renovated, Huckabee and his wife lived in a double-wide trailer on the front lawn. As Huckabee says, "I'm one generation removed from dirt floors and outdoor toilets."

Iowa Republicans may also be responding to Huckabee's post-Bush vision of the Republican Party, which appears more willing to use government to help those in need while less willing to accede to corporate demands.

Indeed, a number of Republican candidates are veering from long-held party orthodoxy, and what's clear in Iowa is that the party won't just nominate a standard-bearer, it will set a course, post-Bush.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, for example, advocates a more militarist ic foreign policy than Bush. Giuliani's foreign policy advisers almost uniformly favor attacking Iran. The candidate also would likely undermine the Republican Party's long campaign against gay and abortion rights, both of which he supports.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was until recently a liberal Republican and seems inclined toward technocratic leadership rather than adherence to ideology. McCain, though for the most part a conservative, has broken ranks with his party on a range of issues, from global warming to campaign finance to immigration to the use of torture on captured enemy combatants.

Rep. Ron Paul, who raised $4.5 million in a 24-hour period this week, represents a libertarian, small-government Republicanism popular in New Hampshire but also in Nevada and the rest of the West.

The Republican Party's main interest groups are also divided.

Conservative televangelist Pat Robertson endorsed Giuliani on Wednesday, while Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas social conservative who recently left the race, endorsed McCain.

Huckabee has unimpeachable social conservative credentials - he doesn't believe in evolution - but he seemed unruffled by the news of Tuesday's endorsements.

He spoke to a crowded upstairs room at Doughy Joey's Peetza Joynt in downtown Waterloo, which is pocked with run-down gin joints and gentlem en's clubs.

Huckabee doesn't have foreign policy principles worked out, though he favors a continued presence in Iraq and said the key to our security is the ability to produce our own food, energy and weaponry, positions that suggest a throwback style of Robert Taft isolationist Republicanism.

He also wants to scrap the federal tax system and replace it with what resembles a sales tax. It is regressive - harder on the working classes because they spend most of what they make. Wealthier people who can afford to save would pay a far smaller portion of their income in taxes.

At the education event later, Huckabee won over the standing-room-only crowd of several hundred. He boasted about raising teacher salaries to region wide highs in Arkansas and advocated quality pre school education and more art and music classes as well as reforms of the No Child Left Behind Act .

Huckabee never mentioned teacher s unions, usually a favorite target of Republican candidates. He broke with conservative dogma by warning against undercutting public education by allowing parents to send their children to private schools at public expense.

He also criticized the high cost of college education.

"I can't think of any problem we have not affected by education," he said.