Spin Cycle

If you think presidential contender Mike Huckabee is off and running, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Officials of the Boston Marathon say that Huckabee has put in an entry to run in the race, traditionally held on Patriot's Day in Beantown on April 21.

Huckabee began running in 2003, lost 110 pounds to combat diabetes, and has already run a 4:38:32 marathon in 2005.

Rick Brand

Speculation, for the moment, centers on whether Fred Thompson cut into the numbers of the former Arkansas governor on the right. Stay tuned, but we just wanted to get that headline out...

Des Moines – When Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee took the stage at a packed hotel ballroom here to declare victory in the Iowa caucuses, the scene resembled a religious revival as much as a victory fete.

“That’s right!” “Amen!” “Hallelujah!” the crowd screamed at Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, between chants of “Huckaboom! Huckaboom!”

But as much as Iowa’s powerful evangelical movement contributed to Huckabee’s astonishing victory, many supporters said rival Mitt Romney’s attack ads also played a role.

Judging by the interviews in this report from Iowa, the Mike Huckabee phenomenon looks a little soft, and Mitt Romney's attacks on the front runner might be tightening things up. Rudy Giuliani's declaration of good health should set him back on course. He trails in the first-big-caucus-vote state, which takes center stage Jan. 3.

In secular-leaning New Hampshire, rising GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher from Arkansas, has portrayed himself as a “committed conservative” rather than a “Christian leader.”

Still, Huckabee, who disavows Darwin and has suggested God may be behind his recent surge in the polls, couldn’t resist a bit of preachiness when it came to one of his favorite topics – the evils of income tax, which he wants to abolish and replace with a consumption tax.

“I’m tired of not only paying my taxes but also paying taxes for every illegal and for every drug dealer and for every prostitute, pimp and gambler,” he said to whoops of approval at campaign stops in the northern New Hampshire towns of Littleton and Berlin. He also singled out “aging hippies” as potential freeloaders. Watch out, skateboarders. You could be next.

However, when beseeched by an elderly woman ...

Letta Tayler

It's Friday. Have some fun. Take a look at this video, as long as you don't take the whole thing too seriously:

In the past, the Giuliani camp has viewed Mike Huckabee as an ally. The theory: If Huckabee beats Romney in Iowa, then it will be harder for Romney to pull off the kind of early-primary sweep that would make the later big states where Rudy is stronger irrelevant.

But, what if Huckabee catches fire? Here's a CNN poll now that shows Huckabee trailing Giuliani only by 24-22 nationally, a statistical tie. And here's a Survey USA poll that shows Huckabee leading the GOP field in South Carolina as well as Iowa. And here's another national poll, this one by the NY Times, that shows Rudy leading Huck 22-21 -- another statistical tie.

At what point does Huckabee mutate from an interesting spoiler to a winner?