Advisors to Huckabee and Brownback hope such appeals will resonate with the culturally conservative voters who dominate Republican politics in Iowa and South Carolina, two of the first states to hold 2008 nominating contests.
"The whole concept here is that you don't have, on the Republican side, a candidate who truly represents conservative values in the top tier," said Dick Dresner, a Huckabee strategist and pollster. "You often do, but not this time."
Victories in early-voting states, the theory goes, would produce a surge of money and momentum for Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister known for shedding 110 pounds on a diet, or Brownback, one of the religious right's strongest allies in Congress.
Rich Bond, a former Republican National Committee chairman, sees the small-arena politics of the Iowa caucuses -- tentatively scheduled for Jan. 14 -- as favorable to Huckabee and Brownback.
"While at times it appears to be mission impossible, nothing's impossible," said Bond, a McCain supporter.
At the same time, however, the national landscape may be bleak for lesser-known candidates, thanks partly to the shifting 2008 election calendar. In a dash for relevance in choosing party nominees, more than a dozen states are moving to advance their presidential primaries to Feb. 5, as California has done, or sooner.
The changes could force candidates to compete early in such large and expensive states as New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois and Florida -- and that could prove to be too steep a barrier even for a lower-tier candidate who posted a solid showing in the earliest contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
"You can't deny this is a giant mountain," Dresner said.
History suggests long odds. The major parties share a pattern of ultimately snubbing longshots who score early successes, notably McCain in 2000 and Democrat Gary Hart in 1984.
The showcase triumph for a dark horse was Democrat Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer and Georgia governor whose months of toiling in Iowa led to an upset in the state's 1976 caucuses and helped propel him to the White House.
But some Iowans taking a look at Huckabee and Brownback wonder whether the burst of big-state primaries in February has ruined the prospects for a Republican to surge as Carter did, when the pace of primaries was slow enough for him to ramp up a national campaign after his Iowa breakthrough.
