Mike Huckabee

In the last days before Thursday's Iowa caucuses, Mike Huckabee, lacking money and staff, is adopting a freewheeling and inexpensive strategy of asymmetrical political warfare -- inviting reporters to a pheasant hunt, a morning jog and a haircut -- to needle his better-funded, better-organized challenger, Mitt Romney.

It's not just Mike Huckabee's top rival in the Republican race who is responsible for attack ads that have damaged his candidacy in the closing days of the Iowa campaign. Huckabee has been the target of a $550,000 campaign waged by the conservative anti-tax Club for Growth. An Arkansas man who is responsible for a separate low-budget hit vowed Monday to take his anti-Huckabee campaign to South Carolina, which holds its GOP primary Jan. 19.

Wearing a red Christmas sweater, Mike Huckabee took the stage inside the cavernous Val Air Ballroom here Tuesday night. Soon he was quoting the prophet Isaiah and asking the more than a thousand people in the room to pray for God's wisdom before taking part in today's Iowa caucuses.

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee swept to victory Thursday night in the Iowa caucuses, dispatching their more established rivals and shredding any sense of inevitability in the 2008 presidential race. The results were a serious setback for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton, who finished a close third behind John Edwards, and for Republican Mitt Romney, who finished second in his race.

The presidential prospects of Mike Huckabee are rising too fast for his campaign to keep up. Word of the former Arkansas governor's victory in the Iowa caucuses Thursday night came so quickly that his staff seemed unprepared. The hotel ballroom in this city's East Village wasn't yet a quarter full, and the blue-and-white "I Like Mike" backdrop behind the podium had not been erected. Neither the candidate nor his family had reached the hotel.

He is no rock star, but Mike Huckabee took pains to prove otherwise on Friday with his electric-bass rendition of "Twist and Shout" in a New Hampshire rock band. A day after his improbable victory in the Iowa caucuses, Huckabee used his guest stint with the band Mama Kicks to show New Hampshire that he is no typical Republican running for president. The rock 'n' roll rally was a bit of calculated mischief by the former governor of Arkansas.

Excerpts from the victory speech by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to his supporters in Des Moines after the Iowa caucuses: I'm amazed, but I'm encouraged, because tonight what we have seen is a new day in American politics. A new day is needed in American politics, just like a new day is needed in American government. And tonight it starts here in Iowa. But it doesn't end here. It goes all the way through the other states and ends at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. one year from now.

Two days before the New Hampshire primary that could make or break his White House candidacy, a combative Mitt Romney quarreled with rivals John McCain and Mike Huckabee over taxes, crime and job experience in a testy Republican debate that exposed growing animosity among the candidates. Romney's attacks set off a cascade of counter-assaults on the former Massachusetts governor, who has placed enormous stakes on winning here but has slid behind McCain in the polls.

No letup in the last hours After Iowa, change is in the air in New Hampshire. In the Democratic primary, Barack Obama's emphasis on change has suddenly made him the candidate to beat. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee has a tall order in replicating his win, but this has forced Mitt Romney to alter his tactics and helped revive John McCain's chances.

As the Mike Huckabee campaign prepared to air a television advertisement attacking Mitt Romney in the last days before the Iowa caucuses, one crucial player argued strenuously against the spot. Her name was Janet Huckabee. Mike Huckabee would eventually announce at a news conference that he was overruling most of his advisors and would not air the ad. He described this as an act of conscience, but he was also bowing to the wishes of his wife of 33 years.