WASHINGTON - Republican White House hopeful Mike Huckabee Sunday declined to identify his Mormon rival Mitt Romney as a Christian, as campaign messages turned increasingly personal a month before voting starts.
Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and a Baptist pastor whose poll ratings have surged ahead of the first nominating contests, also attacked former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani as being in hock to Wall Street.
Interviewed on ABC News, Huckabee was asked whether Romney was a Christian -- the kind of question that conservative religious voters are also raising given doubts in mainstream Christianity about Mormonism as a faith.
"You know, Mitt Romney has to answer that. Nobody can answer for another person, for you, for me," Huckabee responded.
"We all have to personally answer for what our faith is and whether we call ourselves a Christian or we call ourselves Jewish or Muslim. And it's not for me to determine what somebody else's faith is," he said.
The wisecracking, guitar-strumming Huckabee has played on his folksy charm to come from nowhere in the polls -- Sunday's Des Moines Register newspaper put him on top of the Republican field in Iowa with 29 percent.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who has spent millions of dollars in the state and led the polls for months, came in second at 24 percent, with Giuliani trailing at 13 percent.
The Iowa caucuses on January 3 will kick off the nominating contests for the Republican and Democratic parties ahead of November's presidential election.
As he has surged into the winter, Huckabee's own record as governor of Arkansas has come under attack -- in particular whether he has truly conservative credentials on taxes, illegal immigration and crime.
But staying on the offensive, Huckabee said: "I'm an authentic, consistent, hardworking conservative that's got more executive experience (than Giuliani).
"I'm not the candidate who's the favorite of the guys on Wall Street," he added.
While Giuliani leads in national polls of likely Republican voters, his liberal stand on hot-button social issues such as abortion is held in deep mistrust by the religious right.
Addressing evangelical voters, the impeccably pro-life Huckabee said "rather than say, 'Well, let's pick somebody that we don't agree with, why don't you pick somebody you do agree with?'"
jit/ddl
12/02/2007 16:31 GMT