In a month, Huckabee surged from the second tier of Republican candidates to a statistical tie for first place in this week's Des Moines Register poll. Of the likely Republican caucusgoers surveyed, Huckabee scored 29 percent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney scored 24 percent and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani scored 13 percent.

That's got to be a jolt to Romney. He has been a front-runner for weeks in Iowa, where he has spent more than $7 million. Huckabee has spent only about $300,000.

In terms of campaign finance, that's a great David-versus-Goliath story. It warms the heart to see that a small-state governor can still rise up like Democratic Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia did in 1976 to beat the big-name, big-money candidates from bigger states.

Like Carter, Huckabee appears to have found his votes or, more accurately, his votes have found him. Conservative evangelicals are starting to gravitate toward Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister.

For voters who have not made up their minds by now, policies and issues often play a less important role than the visceral good-feelings factors: Who's more "likable?" To whom can I "relate" more easily?

Or as the satirical Onion newspaper recently asked in a pointed satire of such feel-good judgments, who is "the candidate Americans would most like to get in a bar fight with?"

Huckabee's the kind of guy who a lot of people would like to go to prayer meetings with. Conservative evangelicals have played a critical role in Republican successes in recent years, especially for President Bush, who proudly put himself forth in 2000 as one of their own.

To his credit, Huckabee has elevated the debate. I don't agree with his anti-abortion stance, but I appreciate the concern he has shown not just for the unborn but also for people who, after a baby comes into their lives, spiral into financial, emotional or familial distress.

As a minister and politician, Huckabee has actually counseled and worked with poor and working-class families.

He's thrown down a gauntlet against the budget-slashers who want to cut services to the poor as a first resort, not the last.

He also was a courageous voice of reason amid the anti-immigrant feeding frenzy during the latest GOP debate. We should not punish the children of illegal immigrants, he correctly argued, for something that their parents did.

Unfortunately, part of Huckabee's support appears to be coming his way for a very troubling reason: religious bias. Romney, as everyone must know by now, is a Mormon. For months, polls have shown Romney's religion to be a bigger handicap for him with voters than Hillary Rodham Clinton's gender or Barack Obama's race. I attribute that gap to the public's widespread ignorance about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Some Christians regard Mormons as heretics, like a lot of Sunnis regard Shiites and vice versa. I have heard respectable Christian ministers declare on national television that Mormons are not members of a "religion" but of a "cult." That erroneous put-down reminds me of author Tom Wolfe's observation: A "cult" is a religion that lacks political clout.

That's long been the story of ethnic and religious prejudice. We can be frightened about that which we don't know much about. Sen. John F. Kennedy used a speech to help himself get through a similar wall of ignorance about Catholics in 1960. Romney has scheduled a speech for Thursday to confront the religion issue in the same fashion.

We don't need to see any more sectarian divisions in American politics. We've seen too much ugliness from race cards, religion cards, ethnicity cards and gender cards already.

In these times of political and religious polarization, we Americans need to hear a serious voice of moral courage and Huckabee is imminently equipped to deliver it.

In beating back the demon of religious prejudice, Huckabee should give Romney help, not for the sake of either of their campaigns, but for the good of our country.

Chicago Tribune

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