Huckabee's surge

The campaign trailblazer from Hope, Ark., is former Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee, whose sudden rise in polls has shaken the GOP. But as Iowa caucuses approach, the questions will become tougher and the spotlight brighter | Mindy Belz, Marvin Olasky

Show up at Lizards's Thicket any Saturday morning in December, and you can order liver pudding, Carolina catfish, or the All-American with scrambled eggs. If you showed at the legendary Columbia, S.C., restaurant on Dec. 8, though, you could be one of over 300 people, including journalists from Sweden, Belgium, and Japan, listening intently to GOP presidential aspirant Mike Huckabee.

Crowds surged around Huckabee everywhere he went during his final Southern lap; he plans to head to Iowa on Christmas Eve to campaign up to the state's caucus, the nation's first official test by voters, on Jan. 3. At a fundraiser in Asheville, N.C., on the evening of Dec. 8, the dinner crowd topped 1,000 and the line of prospective supporters waiting to greet Huckabee outside a $100-a-head reception snaked back and forth to accommodate its growing length.