WASHINGTON (AFP) — Dark-horse Republican White House hopeful Mike Huckabee Thursday set about building a nationwide challenge, after shining in another debate and surging in the polls in the lead-off voting state of Iowa.
Huckabee, 52, launched a new appeal for campaign cash, following Wednesday's showdown in Florida in which he laced his wise-cracking style with gravitas, while top rivals like Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney clashed ferociously.
Just 34 days before the lead-off Iowa caucus nominating contests, pundits and rivals alike questioned whether the former Arkansas governor's momentum was for real, and whether he could lay down the roots for a surprise victory.
Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, is hoping to emulate former Democratic president Jimmy Carter, who used a surprisingly strong showing in Iowa as a springboard to his party's nomination and the White House.
His immediate challenge with an Iowa victory or strong second place showing on January 3 would be to translate it into a good showing in the next contest, the New Hampshire primary just five days later.
"You would really expect him to get some small boost," said Andrew Dowdle of the Department of Political Science at the University of Arkansas.
"But historically for the Republicans a win in Iowa has not typically generated enough of a boost to go from a second tier candidacy, to a first tier candidacy."
A new Rasmussen Reports poll on Wednesday found Huckabee leading in Iowa, 28 to 25 percent, over former Massachusetts governor Romney, who had led in the crucial state for months and spent millions of dollars there.
The poll showed he had consolidated support (48 percent) among evangelical Christians, a key Republican voting bloc, especially in Iowa.
Other recent polls in the state showed Romney still ahead, but also picked up Huckabee's surge.
"It's not clear how well he would perform under increased expectations and scrutiny," said a Rasmussen analysis accompanying the poll.
"It's also not clear what sort of financial resources he could obtain or how strong an organization he could build on the fly."
A RealClearPolitics.com average of recent polls in New Hampshire shows Huckabee mired in fifth place on just 6.7 percent of the vote -- well behind Romney's 33 percent.
Huckabee is also fifth in South Carolina, another key state in the Republican race, and trails in national polls, putting up only nine percent on average, well behind Giuliani on 28 percent.
In the crucial money stakes, seen as a key evaluator of a candidate's hopes, Huckabee has also trailed well behind his top rivals.
Up until the end of September, Huckabee had raised only 2.3 million dollars for his campaign. Romney and Giuliani have racked up over 50 million dollars each.
Bulging campaign war chests mean candidates can launch advertising blitzes in the final few weeks of the campaign, and mount huge get-out-the-vote operations in key states.
Earlier Huckabee declared "the surge is on," in a post-debate email to supporters, trumpeting a 160,000 dollar explosion in campaign fundraising since the day before.
Huckabee's style is to leaven his staunch conservatism -- pro-gun rights, doubts about the theory of evolution, opposition to gay marriage, and hawkish rhetoric on Iraq and the war on terror -- with levity.
He aimed a humorous swipe Wednesday at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton when asked whether the United States should expand its manned space program.
"I don't know ... but I'll tell you what, if we do, I've got a few suggestions, and maybe Hillary could be on the first rocket to Mars."
And when he was asked whether Jesus would have approved of the death penalty, he quipped: "Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office."
Prior to his surge in the polls, Huckabee was best known for hailing from the same town -- Hope, Arkansas -- as former president Bill Clinton.
He detailed his struggle to lose over 100 pounds from his once portly frame in a bestselling book, "Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork."
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