Republican caucus still up for grabs ... and surprises

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DES MOINES, Iowa -- The underdog stood alone inside a deserted banquet room, absent his power tie, no entourage in sight.It was way back on April 14, in the bowels of the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines before the Republican Party's annual Abraham Lincoln Unity Dinner.Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wasn't wearing the aw-shucks, dimpled grin that he usually carries like a calling card.So a reporter peeked through the doorway and asked him about the frustration that had started leaking out of him at some campaign stops.He's a former Baptist minister. So why didn't Huckabee seem to be picking up much momentum from the evangelical Christians who would seem like such a natural base?Huckabee said he didn't know. After all, he said of evangelicals, "I'm not going to them. I'm coming from them . . . "This was a more stone-faced and serious Huckabee than the shucking and joshing one the country had come to know.If folks knew him at all, it was for his shedding more than 100 pounds before he got onto the road to the White House.All spring, Huckabee had languished in the bottom tier of the polls, stuck in low single-digits. It took all year and the alignment of many stars, but Huckabee finally got a rush of religious conservatives to his camp. In November, his poll numbers doubled in a matter of weeks.Now, the once-lonely long shot is the man to watch going into Iowa's Republican precinct caucuses on Thursday.Whether he stuns the longtime Iowa favorite, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, or proves to be a flash in the pan, Huckabee is sure to be one of the lead stories of the night.Few could have guessed it when the long march to the caucuses began.X...X...XThe Lincoln dinner brought out all the big guns. There were warm-up events all over town. But none brought out the media circus like former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's quick stop at the landmark Noah's Ark restaurant -- a windowless Italian food joint where Tony Soprano might feel at home.Giuliani brought a posse of New York staffers in pin-striped suits. He made small talk with the lunchtime crowd, weaving his way through a labyrinth of tables and booths.Thanks to his role on Sept. 11, 2001, he didn't need an introduction anywhere in America. But he gave himself one."I'm running for president because I think the country needs somebody who keeps us on offense in the war on terror," Giuliani said at the restaurant.As the battle for Iowa began, all the buzz was about Giuliani and his leading rival, Sen. John McCain -- the independent-minded maverick who gave President Bush a run in 2000, only to smack into a brick wall in Bush's Bible Belt bastion, South Carolina.This time would be different, McCain said.He literally embraced some of the Southern religious leaders he had once decried as "agents of intolerance." McCain pledged to put up a full-fledged fight in Iowa this time, not relying on independent-minded New Hampshire as his only springboard.And then there was the fresh face on the block: Romney, whose business background, personal wealth and Prince Charming looks made him a formidable foe from day one.Together, Giuliani, McCain and Romney commanded nearly two-thirds of the vote in the Iowa polls last spring.But on that Saturday night in April, when Iowa Republicans put nine would-be nominees through their paces, one of the also-rans sounded an alarm.Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, as perhaps the only highlight of his short-lived campaign, lumped the three presumed front-runners into one slur."Rudy McRomney is not a conservative, and he knows he is not a conservative," Gilmore said, drawing a smattering of hisses and boos from partisans at the banquet tables.In a few syllables, it captured the suspicion that lingered throughout the yearlong battle for Iowa: There was room for another candidate -- a more traditional conservative -- in the Republican Party's top tier.It would be someone who didn't support abortion and gay rights, as Giuliani had; someone who hadn't compromised with Democrats on issues like immigration and campaign finance reform (unpopular with religious and conservative organizations), as McCain had; perhaps someone who hadn't only recently converted to the anti-abortion cause, as Romney had.X...X...XMeanwhile, in Iowa, it became the summer of Mitt.Although still less widely known than Giuliani and McCain nationally, his face had been a fixture on Iowa television all spring.Combining nonstop TV advertising with dozens of visits by the candidate and his surrogates, Romney became the presumed front-runner in the Hawkeye State.By July, Romney's polls and organizational strength appeared so formidable in Iowa that Giuliani and McCain announced they would skip the nonbinding but closely-watched Iowa Straw Poll in August.When the straw poll finally arrived on Aug. 10, Iowans bounced from one candidate picnic to the next and cast symbolic ballots, dipping their thumbs in purple ink afterwards like voters in Iraq.That night, when the results were announced, Romney was first, with 31.5 percent of the vote, followed by Huckabee at 18.1 percent.Although Huckabee trailed Romney by 1,929 votes, it didn't matter. In the expectations game, Romney's win was a yawn. This had always been a fight for second.Minutes after the announcement, the folksy preacher rushed into the press zone and repeated his longstanding prophecy about eventually becoming a front-runner."I think maybe even you guys will believe it now," Huckabee declared.Romney, who survived what would have been an embarrassing defeat to any of the second-tier candidates, went back to sparring with his biggest national rival, Giuliani.As for Huckabee, his campaign organizers expected a huge surge in fund raising and poll support. But that didn't happen.The white knight hadn't yet ridden into the Republican contest.X...X...XOut in Hollywood, there was another plain-talking actor (just like Reagan!) waiting to ride into the race and save it from Rudy McRomney.That, in a nutshell, was the wait-and-see storyline once former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, still playing the stone-faced prosecutor on the television drama Law & Order, floated a trial balloon that he might enter the contest.Some candidates spend two or more years hopping from one small-town diner to the next, testing the message and picking up supporters one at a time. Fred Thompson chose a novel strategy: He made people wait.And his delay in entering the race only made his mystique -- and the expectations -- grow.On the September morning when Thompson finally announced his candidacy in Des Moines on a glitzy stage flanked by giant television screens, he waded into the crowd and was quickly mobbed by a swarm of photographers. His staff quickly ushered him off to his next stop.Asked what she thought of his speech, Cyndi Cox, of Des Moines, said she liked almost all of what he said. But she scolded Thompson's handlers for preventing the handshake she and most Iowans have come to expect from candidates."I think that puts him on the wrong foot for Iowans," she said.And it was downhill from there.It was a sign of things to come when influential evangelical Christian leader James Dobson of Colorado-based Focus on the Family sent a private e-mail (which was leaked to The Associated Press) saying Thompson had "no passion, no zeal" and "can't speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail."Now that the more socially conservative wing of the party had gotten a glance at the man who was supposed to save them, they looked back to rest of the field.The stage was set for a surge.X...X...XThe crowd went wild as the grinning little man with the close-cropped hair picked up his bass guitar on the same stage where Buddy Holly had played his last gig in 1959.The Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake was buzzing that Friday night in late October. A new poll was out from Rasmussen Research. It showed Huckabee had hit double-digits for the first time nationally, pulling just ahead of Romney.A member of the band named for Romney's hometown -- Boston -- joined Huckabee on stage as the governor's band did some G-rated classic rock numbers that set the family crowd dancing."We want to show that conservatives, Republicans, Christian believers can have as much fun as anybody else in the whole world," Huckabee told his fans.But the fun was just beginning.Huckabee was fresh off his 51 percent showing in a "values voters" survey. His Web site was being flooded with new campaign contributions. He raised more in a few weeks than he had to that point all year.Suddenly, from Oct. 3 to Nov. 28, Huckabee surged from 12 percent to 29 percent in the Des Moines Register's poll of likely Republican caucus-goers, finally ripping the front-runner title away from Romney.Finally, the national media started treating Huckabee like a "rock star" -- and that meant a hotter spotlight.Fiscal conservatives ripped him for raising some taxes back in Arkansas. Critics questioned his interest in foreign policy questions -- especially when he admitted he knew nothing about a huge story that had dominated the news: a new intelligence report suggesting Iran had scrapped its nuclear weapons program.Huckabee portrayed the new round of attacks as a sign of life, noting that hunters don't take shots at dead deer carcasses.Now, whatever effect Huckabee might or might not have on the national stage, his showing on a cold night in January is certain to be one of the leading story lines -- as a victor or a flop.That's something few might have guessed last spring, when at times he sounded like a man seeking an exit strategy.As he told reporters at one stop in April: "If it comes to the point where nobody wants to contribute, and people are falling away rather than coming on board, then you know, I've got to face that reality."For the moment, that seems like someone else's song.(Contact M.E. Sprengelmeyer of the Rocky Mountain News at sprengelmeyerm(at)shns.com.)