senator rick santorum. let s go to cnn s joe johns right now. he s joining us from des moines. i think rick santorum believed in himself. not a whole lot of others, joe, did. but it s been quite amazing over these past few days how well he s done. reporter: that s true, wolf. you know, more than half of the republicans who participated in this process the last time around viewed themselves as evangelical christians. born again christians. so it might be a little risque to compare this process to a seduction, but rick santorum has gone a long way. he says the other candidates in the race are speed dating, and he says what he s been doing is a courtship. i have done literally 358 or 359 town hall meetings in the state of iowa. we ve been to all 99 counties, and we weren t speed dating. reporter: rick santorum s polling numbers, his surge in the race for iowa, is starting to look like love. though the question is, what took so long for a staunch conservative who s been cou
if he gets a strong iowa show ing. if he comes in a strong second, he gets the bounce from iowa, we ll see what happens. let s go back in time. the question is, if rock santorum tuz what mike huckabee did four years ago, how does he bounce out? you mentioned, wolf, mike huckabee did not do well in new hampshire. 2008. mike huckabee didn t do very well. why? a very different state. very few evangelical, born-again christian conservative voters in the state of new hampshire. you heard senator santorum just there with wolf talking about his economic message. there are a lot of gritty blue-collar voters down here in this part of the state especially. gun owners in this part of the state. that would be his appeal. trying to do what huckabee did not do, expand beyond the evangelical voters. if he can try to do that in new hampshire, that would be a great challenge. if he did fairly well in new hampshire, then he would become a giant factor in the race in south carolina. here you see the or
ing. if he comes in a strong second, he gets the bounce from iowa, we ll see what happens. let s go back in time. the question is, if rock santorum tuz what mike huckabee did four years ago, how does he bounce out? you mentioned, wolf, mike huckabee did not do well in new hampshire. 2008. mike huckabee didn t do very well. why? a very different state. very few evangelical, born-again christian conservative voters in the state of new hampshire. you heard senator santorum just there with wolf talking about his economic message. there are a lot of gritty blue-collar voters down here in this part of the state especially. gun owners in this part of the state. that would be his appeal. trying to do what huckabee did not do, expand beyond the evangelical voters. if he can try to do that in new hampshire, that would be a great challenge. if he did fairly well in new hampshire, then he would become a giant factor in the race in south carolina. here you see the orange here. this is huckabee 2008