Long odds are story of his life

Without the resources to out-advertise McCain, Huckabee can fall back on two dependable ingredients firing his campaign: a core of fervent, mostly Christian-evangelical supporters, who urge him to persist, and the continuing success of a booking operation that relentlessly finds him airtime on national and local television programs. In one particularly heady stretch after his five primary victories in the Super Tuesday contests Feb. 5, Huckabee knocked out nearly two dozen TV appearances in about 18 hours.

Attendance at rallies here beginning Wednesday night was relatively modest, about 100 to 300 people at each stop. But many of those who attended said they would find it hard to vote for anybody but Huckabee.

They called out "Amen!" as their man noted he was the only remaining candidate to support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. They hooted in affirmation as he tore up another 1040 form on stage -- symbolic of his pledge to abolish the Internal Revenue Service in favor of a national sales tax. They chuckled knowingly when Huckabee, a 2nd Amendment champion, talked about how he and wife, Janet, toted concealed weapons when he was in the governor's mansion in Little Rock. (The punch line: "And she's the one you'd better look out for.")

Huckabee has a way of warding off confrontation by delivering even his toughest pronouncements with a smile. One minute, he is joking to voters in La Crosse that they should simply let the air out of the car tires of voters who will support McCain on Tuesday. The next, he is telling reporters that, if more "law-abiding" citizens carried guns, tragedies like Thursday's mass shooting at an Illinois university might have been prevented.

Fans like Karan Johnson of Platteville, who came to a rally Thursday at a hotel in downtown Madison, said they hoped to fulfill Huckabee's dream scenario -- a Wisconsin victory that would unsettle the sense of McCain as the inevitable Republican winner.

"I think it's awesome he is not worrying about offending the Republican Party; he is thinking about us," said Johnson, a weight management coach, who also appreciates Huckabee for his success in dropping more than 100 pounds several years ago. "It's about the people's voices right here in this room and in Ohio and in Texas. They should still have a say.

"I believe God has a plan for this man's life," added Johnson, a self-described Christian, "and I think it's to go all the way to the White House."