When it comes time to play the rock classic "Born to Be Wild," the bassist of the group Capitol Offense cranks it up. Swinging his guitar through the air, his entire body rocks to the beat. "Born to be wihi-hi-hild!" The audience is rapt.

A second glance, however, reveals that the base player's short hair is thinning. Indeed, he's not a real rock star at all, rather he is the newest sensation in the US presidential election campaign. His name, Mike Huckabee, is unfamiliar even to most American ears, but it warms the hearts of Republicans -- at least those who fear God and who are fiercely opposed to such modern aberrations as homosexuality and abortion.

Huckabee, 52, until recently the governor of Arkansas, is also a Baptist pastor of humble origins. With his grass-roots appeal, his charm and especially his religion, he wants to make good as president of the United States. Not yet on the radar of the generous donors among America’s millionaires, Huckabee has dragged his band Capitol Offense into the campaign -- recently they played the old Steppenwolf song in Des Moines, Iowa.

The farming state is vital because it is here that the presidential candidates for 2008 will be voted on first, in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. Iowa is a symbol: Whoever wins usually gets a boost for the string of primaries that follow, one after the other. And whoever loses here has a tough time catching up.

Rapidly Catching Up

Iowa is, at this point in the campaign, the epicenter. No candidate, whether Republican or Democrat, can afford to ignore it. Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, has been especially active in the Hawkeye State, as Iowa is known. He is financing much of his campaign with his own money, but it's not his wealth that generates the most mistrust. Evangelical Republicans are suspicious of the fact that Romney is a Mormon. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, who is hoping his Sept. 11 heroism will propel him to the White House, doesn't look to have a chance in Iowa.

For a long time, Romney was well ahead. Now, though, a two-man race has broken out in Iowa. With his aura of authenticity, Mike Huckabee has been rapidly catching up to his competitor. Since July he has tripled his support and one survey even shows Huckabee in the lead. And a new nationwide AP poll has Huckabee now in second place among Republican voters, with 18 percent support to Giuliani's 26 percent.

Huckabee’s shooting-star ascent is the story of an outsider who trusts only himself and God -- exactly the kind of story that America loves. Romney, for example, has received $64 million in donations so far and has 65 campaign employees in Iowa, an enormous number. In contrast, Huckabee has raised a modest $2.3 million and is relying on word-of-mouth advertising after Sunday sermons. Huckabee is the fresh face in the election campaign, and the spotlights are now pointed in his direction -- a huge help for his prospects.

Laughter and Approval

Last Wednesday, all the Republican hopefuls met for a presidential debate, and since then Huckabee has become a national figure. “The death penalty, what would Jesus do?” is one of the pointed questions posed to the former governor, who says himself that more criminals were executed on his watch than that of any of his predecessors. Huckabee launched into his answer, mumbled something about moral conflicts in questions of life and death, before finally arriving at the perfect response. “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office,” Huckabee said to laughter and approval.

In the audience was Huckabee's most prominent supporter, action movie star Chuck Norris. Indeed, Norris appeared in the first television ad the candidate could afford. “When Chuck Norris does push-ups, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the earth down,” explains a straight-faced Huckabee in the ad. “My plan to secure the borders? Two words. Chuck Norris.”

Despite such hard-line gags, respect for Huckabee is on the rise. “He is the most articulate, visionary candidate of anybody in the field,” Dan Bartlett, former advisor to President George W. Bush, said in a Washington Post political blog. Bartlett calls Huckabee the “best candidate” and sees only one major disadvantage: “having the last name 'Huckabee.'”

“It’s hard not to like Mike Huckabee,” the liberal magazine Newsweek observes almost grudgingly. “He proves that a religious conservative can be a nice guy,” adds an influential Republican in Washington.

“He’s my man,” says pastor Scott Wilson from Mason City, Iowa. “His values are my values. He represents the core of America.” Evangelicals like Mr. Wilson appreciate that Huckabee publicly rails against abortion, even comparing it to the Holocaust. “Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our work force. It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our work force had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973,” Huckabee says in all seriousness to drive home his point.

'Give Hope a Second Chance'

But there is also another side. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee proposed a scholarship for gifted children of illegal immigrants. After Hurricane Katrina, he helped find shelter for 70,000 displaced people from New Orleans.

Both sides of his personality, the extremely conservative side and that of the socially-oriented helper, endear Huckabee to Republicans. To them he’s a “compassionate conservative” -- the party’s model since Ronald Reagan. George W. Bush has had his difficulties living up to the standard. With Huckabee, occasionally also called “the hillbilly Ronald Reagan” because of his Arkansas heritage, words are consistent with deeds -- for the moment at least.