As Mike Huckabee has risen in the polls, the inevitable press-driven process of trying to bring him down has begun. But in this case, the "gaffes" the press are reporting are as likely to help him - particularly in Iowa - as they are to hurt him.

Time and again, polls have shown that one of the key distinguishing fault lines between the parties is that Republicans tend to place a much more important emphasis on the role of religion in their lives than Democrats. This is certainly true in Iowa - a state where almost 40% of the GOP caucus universe considers itself "evangelical" and which put Pat Robertson into second place in 1988, ahead of George Bush.

It's true that Huckabee's long-ago statements that the "real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives," or that homosexuality is an "aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle," or even that AIDS patients need to be isolated (a view he has long since repudiated), won't find a lot of adherents on the Upper East Side or in newsrooms around the country. But those people don't vote in Republican primaries and caucuses.

It's all a bit reminiscent of 1976 when Jimmy Carter (a Huckabee-like figure) said he was opposed to injecting "black families into a white neighborhood just to create some sort of integration." He added: "I have nothing against a community that is made up of people who are Polish, or who are Czechoslovakians, or who are French Canadians or who are blacks trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods."

It caused a firestorm. But the comment probably helped Carter more with some voters than it hurt him with others.

Even all the news about Huckabee's role in the release of a rapist who later went on murder two women is unlikely to hurt him all that much. Though the coverage might indicate otherwise, this isn't Michael Dukakis, whose administration had a furlough program - a key difference. In this case, there wasn't even a pardon.

This isn't to say that Huckabee won't be hurt by constant attacks as he rises; it's part of the process. But the ones so far, especially in Iowa? The hunch here is that they may well have had the opposite effect.

To read Steven Stark's complete "Presidential Tote Board" blog, go to www.thephoenix.com/toteboard/