Huckabee Preaches to the Choir

Mike Huckabee's campaign reaches a crucial turning point today in the South Carolina primary. He hasn't put all his eggs in this basket, but certainly has committed a great many of them. His message in South Carolina is frequently colored with Christian references as he tries to swing the large evangelical vote his way:

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Mike Huckabee mentioned his faith only glancingly in his stump speech this week at North Greenville University in Tigerville, S.C. Discussing presidential decisions that will matter after he is long gone, he added: “By the way, I have made arrangements for what happens after that, and it’s all good. It’s all good.”

No one missed his allusion to the afterlife at North Greenville, a Southern Baptist college, where the college president pulled back Mr. Huckabee to expand on his “salvation experience” as a 10-year-old at summer Bible school.

“I didn’t want to get dirty, because I have never felt so clean in my life,” Mr. Huckabee told a hushed crowd of several hundred.

Between his droll performance and heartfelt encore runs the delicate line that Mr. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister before becoming governor of Arkansas, walks as he tries to fire up his fellow evangelical Christians to vote for one of their own without unnerving more secular-minded voters.

His advisers say he has counted on the support of existing networks of conservative Christian activists to help propel his shoestring campaign to a victory on Saturday in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, just as they did in the Iowa caucuses two weeks ago.

Evangelicals are expected to make up an even larger share of South Carolina primary voters, and recent polls show Mr. Huckabee locked in a close race with Senator John McCain of Arizona.

The thing that some Republicans fear and that Democrats salivate over is the possibility of Huckabee winning the nomination and then having all these religious references used against him in the general election. While Christian themes and Baptist doctrine might play well in a southern state GOP primary, they're not going to play as well when repeated endlessly in those Dem ads with the spooky music and shaky video that you know will be run day and night come the Fall. A Republican candidate wouldn't dare run those kinds of ads against him now, but the Democrats will do so with great joy.

Today's results should give us an idea if Huckabee will have the staying power to continue in the big Super Tuesday contests.