The Nation - Iowa crowds give an amen to Huckabee - Evangelical leaders are endorsing other GOP candidates, but the ex-governor plays well with the masses.

She didn't want to eat yet, she explained. She was waiting for the next president of the United States to say grace.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a longtime Southern Baptist pastor, didn't think to pray over the pepperoni when he pitched his candidacy for the Republican nomination to a fired-up crowd at Doughy Joey's. But otherwise, he hit all the right notes for Samuel -- and for scores of other conservative Christians who packed his campaign events in Iowa this week and interrupted his speech at the pizza parlor with repeated calls of "Amen!"

After months of dismissing Huckabee as a nice guy with no chance to win, Iowa's influential social conservatives are giving him a second look. The latest polls give him anywhere from 13% to 19% of the vote in Iowa, up from 2% to 3% a few months ago. Those numbers put him in second place behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

His campaign suggests he can win the state's Jan. 3 caucuses outright, then make a strong showing in New Hampshire, where he's polling fourth.

"I plan to surprise a lot of people," said Huckabee, 52.

To pull it off, he will need thousands of conservative evangelical voters to disregard the advice of their leaders.

Televangelist Pat Robertson this week threw his support behind former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, saying he wanted to back the man he thought could best protect the country from terrorism. Several intellectual architects of the religious right support Romney, among them James Bopp Jr., a top antiabortion activist, and Paul Weyrich, a founder of the Moral Majority. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, who is popular among evangelicals, recently dropped his bid and backed Arizona Sen. John McCain.

In Iowa this week, Huckabee's supporters did not try to hide their disappointment -- and bewilderment -- at the string of big-name endorsements going to other candidates. Their man is not only a preacher, but a lifelong crusader for the causes they cherish. He wants to make abortion a federal crime and to outlaw same-sex marriage. He would like public-school students to learn creationism alongside evolution.

To see Huckabee losing so many endorsements "boggles my mind," said Matt Reisetter, who works for the campaign.