-- candidates like Indiana's Brad Ellsworth and North Carolina's Heath Shuler who helped unseat the Republican majority in Congress with a mix of populist economics and religious dogma. "Huckabee's exactly like the Blue Dogs," says Brantley. "They have the same message."

Coupled with his apparent gift for wooing the star-fucking national media class, Huckabee's seizure of political territory long claimed by the corporate right is what makes him so dangerous. Because for all his political waffling in other areas -- Huckabee has flip-flopped on a host of earthly political issues, from taxes to local control of school boards -- he leaves absolutely no doubt about his commitment to religious wackohood.

George Bush and John Ashcroft were religious in a scary way, but the rational among us could always take heartthe race to Armageddon. "If you're with Jesus Christ, we know how it turns out in the final moment," he said. "I've read the last chapter in the book, and we do end up winning."

Winning? I ask Huckabee when, exactly, he thinks victory will arrive. "When I was eighteen, I thought I had it pretty well figured out," he says. "I thought the end of the world was coming at any moment." But when I ask how his views have changed, he says only that he is "less adamant now." Huckabee, with the wisdom of age, apparently believes we have at least a day or two left until the end of the world.

The troubling thing about Huckabee's God rhetoric is that a man who is glad that Christians