How did Mike Huckabee, a little known governor of Arkansas, find himself running neck and neck for the Republican nomination with Rudy Giuliani?

It is usually only paranoid conspiracy theorists who blame the press for causing the events they report, but in the case of the presidential race the insatiable need to find a new angle on an old story certainly helps the underdog.

It is hard to recall that a year ago Senator McCain led the Republican field. He has spent the last seven years positioning himself as the man to beat, biting his tongue as he loyally supported President Bush’s policies which, in private, he held in deep despair.

He hoped that being the preeminently qualified candidate, remaining silent on aspects of the war, such as the number of troops on the ground and the use of torture in interrogations, and by fronting the White House’s attempts at immigration reform, he would emerge at the front of the pack. And he did, for a while.

Then the Republican race split in two. In Iowa and New Hampshire, Mitt Romney set off on the risky but conventional route to the nomination. Too rich to need to persuade supporters to part with their money, Mr. Romney thought he could leverage his time as Massachusetts governor and savior of the Utah Winter Olympics into a winning presidential bid by gaining early momentum.

Having won, or having put on an unexpectedly decent showing, in Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Romney thought his good looks and his plausible manner would propel him into the White House.

Meanwhile, Mr. Giuliani was planning a quite different route to the top. Wary of the conservative Christians in Iowa and the maverick blue collar voters in New Hampshire, he developed a big state strategy by which he would use his urbane Manhattan metrosexuality to win New York, California, Florida, and other delegate-rich states in the super primary at the beginning of February. It soon became clear that this marathon election, the first in recent memory not to have an incumbent, vice president, or establishment candidate, would set out at a sprint. Mr. McCain was an early victim of this stampede. The voters, and their conduit the press, knew enough already about the Arizona senator, and they concentrated their gaze on the newcomers instead.

Looking back on the race, Mr. Romney may well consider that he spent too much money too quickly. As soon as attention began being paid to the early states, he started pouring large amounts of his personal fortune into television adverts and quickly established himself as the early primary frontrunner, a fact that deeply alarmed the jumpy Mr. Giuliani.

If Mr. Romney broke from the rest of the pack and gained enough momentum, Mr. Giuliani’s big state gambit was at risk. Mr. McCain, too, sensed that Mr. Romney’s early turn of speed might run away with the nomination. As was clear in the CNN/YouTube debate, both Messrs. Giuliani and McCain felt they needed to trip Mr. Romney if eventually they were to beat him.

This pincer movement against Mr. Romney by the unspoken Giuliani/McCain alliance has proved the most telling, and most painful, of all the debate exchanges so far.

In response to Mr. Romney’s persistent accusation that under Mayor Giuliani New York became a “sanctuary city” which tolerated illegal immigrants, Mr. Giuliani let fly with the sort of smiling, snarling venom familiar to those who lived in the city when he presided over City Hall.

“If you’re going to take this holier than thou attitude that you are perfect on immigration … it just happens you have a special immigration problem that nobody else up here has. You were employing illegal immigrants. That is a pretty serious thing. They were under your nose,” Mr. Giuliani said with all the subtlety of a former prosecutor taking down a member of the Mob.

Mr. McCain chose his moment to zap Mr. Romney when the debate turned to waterboarding. Mr. Romney said he was against torture “in any way, shape, or form,” but would not offer an opinion on whether simulated drowning was torture. Senator McCain pounced.

“Well, governor, I’m astonished that you haven’t found out what waterboarding is,” he said, his whole body shaking with rage. “I am astonished that you would think … such a torture would be inflicted on anyone. … It’s in violation of the Geneva Convention. It’s in violation of existing law.”

It is significant that neither Mr. Giuliani nor Mr. McCain laid a glove on Mr. Huckabee, who was seen as a surrogate who would gnaw away at Mr. Romney’s big lead in Iowa and New Hampshire. There was even talk of a quid pro quo between Messrs. Giuliani and Huckabee, with the mayor taking the top slot on the ticket and the Arkansas governor taking second billing.

What vanity.

Quietly, while the big beasts of the Republican jungle were roaring and clawing at each other, the mild and modest Mr. Huckabee, like James Stewart as Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” was making steady progress. As a Southern Baptist, he had spotted what may turn out to be Mr. Romney’s fatal weakness: his Mormonism. By playing up his own role as a “Christian leader,” and invoking at every turn Jesus as his mentor, Mr. Huckabee silently slipped a stiletto into Mr. Romney’s ribs.

Although the Massachusetts governor’s appeal last week in College Station, Texas, for religious tolerance and more religion in public life showed that he could look and talk like a president, by addressing the issue of his faith he has only drawn attention to it, causing more voters to consider whether or not they really would be happy with a Mormon in the White House.

The most recent Iowa poll, for Newsweek, puts the Arkansas governor at 39%, ahead of Mr. Romney’s 17%. And in the latest national poll, for CNN, Mr. Huckabee is just two statistically insignificant points behind the leader, Mr. Giuliani.

It is still early days and the race will no doubt continue to be full of surprises. But right now, Mr. Huckabee looks to be in a strong position to clinch the nomination while his rivals slug it out around him.

nwapshott@nysun.com