Huckabee moves to front as Romney struggles

By Charles Savage, Globe staff

GRINNELL, IA -- Mike Huckabee's resounding win in Thursday night's Iowa caucuses instantly reshaped the race for the Republican nomination for president, transforming the former Arkansas governor into a legitimate contender ahead of next Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.

The Iowa results left former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney needing to scramble to find a way to restore momentum to his campaign.

Huckabee, whose passionate following by evangelical Christians propelled him to the top of Iowa polls, outpaced the better-funded campaign of Romney, the onetime front-runner who barraged Huckabee with negative ads in the closing week.

Romney was on a path toward a second-place finish, with four other candidates locked in battle over who would win third-place bragging rights. Early results showed former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, Arizona senator John McCain, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuiliani, and Texas congressman Ron Paul bunched in the next tier.

The unexpected twists of the Iowa contest -- including the abrupt rise of the relatively unknown former governor of Arkansas and a late revival by McCain, who has also surged back into second place in New Hampshire polls -- left GOP candidates scrambling to figure out their next moves.

At a noon rally in a veterans' hall in Grinnell yesterday, Huckabee told a crowd of several hundred supporters that his likely strong showing would be a "seismic event" in the political world because he had been outspent "20 to 1" by Romney.

"We don't have to finish first here in order to feel like we've been successful, but . . . if we are able to win, it is an incredible testament of the revival of the American political system and the fact that when it gets down to it, individual votes still matter and money can't buy elections," Huckabee told reporters afterward.

Despite his popularity in Iowa, Huckabee faces a less-sympathetic audience in New Hampshire, where the GOP electorate is driven more by fiscal conservatism than social issues. Supporter Dennis Crawford cq yesterday said he hoped New Hampshire primary-goers would take a second look at Huckabee following the caucuses.

Romney, by contrast, needed a good performance in Iowa to keep alive his strategy of securing the nomination by building momentum in the early primary and caucus states. While he enjoys a regional advantage in New Hampshire because of his governorship of next-door Massachusetts, his momentum plan now must become a do-or-die win in the Granite State.