From Back of G.O.P. Pack, Huckabee Is Stirring

By MICHAEL LUO
Published: November 9, 2007


CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, Nov. 8 — Mike Huckabee’s field staff had expected a modest crowd for a campaign event at a tiny rural community college near here on Wednesday. But as people began to cram into the shoe-box-size room, campaign organizers scurried to roll back a dividing wall and set up extra chairs.

To the Huckabee campaign, it was another small note in a recent trickle of encouraging moments. His fund-raising is up, the campaign just received its first major Christian conservative endorsement and most of all — to Mr. Huckabee’s obvious delight — opponents are beginning to take potshots at him.

“I’ve always said as a hunter, ‘You never put the cross hairs on a dead carcass,’” Mr. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, told reporters Wednesday. “You only aim for something that’s alive that you’d like to take home.”

With less than two months until Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, there are signs that Mr. Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor for whom Bible verses flow easily off the tongue, is charming, quipping and sermonizing his way from a long shot ensconced in the second tier of the Republican presidential sweepstakes to a possible contender here.

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