Mike Huckabee speaks at a "fair tax" rally on Sunday, Nov. 16, in Duluth, Georgia, where he was campaigning for Sen. Saxby Chambliss in his Dec. 2 runoff election against Democratic candidate Jim Martin. (AP)

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Republican primary contender Mike Huckabee never tired of saying he was the real conservative in the ’08 presidential race, but he wasn’t an angry conservative.

In a GOP campaign that got angrier as it went, that stood out.

Huckabee ran on a shoestring and outlasted every Republican competitor but John McCain. Now, Mike Huckabee is having his say. He’s got sharp words for Mitt Romney. For evangelicals who did not line up with him.

He’s got questions about why it was McCain-Pailin, not McCain-Huckabee. And he’s looking ahead.

This hour, On Point: Mike Huckabee speaks.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Mike Huckabee joins us from Lexington, Kentucky. Former Arkansas governor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate, his new book is “Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That’s Bringing Common Sense Back to America.”

From Washington, we’ll be joined later this hour by Gail Chaddock, Congressional reporter for the Christian Science Monitor.

And we’ll be joined by David Winston, a Republican pollster and strategist currently advising House Minority Leader John Boehner and other congressional GOP leaders. He served as director of planning for former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and is a columnist for Roll Call and an election analyst for CBS News.

In the homestretch to Iowa and New Hampshire, former Arkansas governor and Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee has been the stunning wild card in the GOP pack. He’s spent next to nothing, turned his back on a generation of angry conservatism, and is now in striking distance of big wins in the Republican presidential primaries.

Here at On Point, we talked with Huckabee last summer, before he leapt into the GOP’s front rank. He told us a lot that still resonates.

This hour from the On Point archives: in the home stretch to the first votes of Election ‘08, a conversation with the other man from Hope — Mike Huckabee.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guest:

Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential candidate

By guest host Jane Clayson

Like a revivalist preacher riding into town, Mike Huckabee — the former Baptist minister, Arkansas Governor, and long-shot Republican presidential candidate — is hogging the limelight, and sparking a lot of curiosity.

In new polls released this week, he has surged to the top of the GOP field in Iowa, and is virtually tied with Rudy Giuliani nationally.

Now, inevitably, the attacks are starting to fly: A flip-flop on immigration. A pardon for a rapist. A call to quarantine AIDS patients.

What kind of conservative, and what kind of man, is Mike Huckabee? This hour, On Point: the Huckabee surge.

-Jane Clayson

Guests:

Michael Isikoff, investigative reporter at Newsweek magazine, he’s co-author of this week’s cover story, “Holy Huckabee! The Unlikely Rise of a Preacher Politician.”

Jim Pinkerton, columnist for Newsday, contributor to the Fox News Channel and a fellow at the New America Foundation, he worked in the White House under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

John Brummett, columnist and reporter for Arkansas News Bureau.

Jonathan Martin, senior political reporter for Politico.com.