Huckabee moves beyond religious right

By Ed Stoddard

ROCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Republican Mike Huckabee is trying to soften the image of the religious right as he reaches out to liberal Christians and blue-collar workers for support in his presidential campaign.

It's a delicate balancing act for the ordained Baptist minister who staunchly opposes abortion and gay marriage.

But the folksy southerner told Reuters he believed some evangelicals had widened their political concerns beyond the hot-button cultural issues that helped put George W. Bush in the White House and had mellowed enough to embrace causes like poverty and the environment.

Huckabee, who won the first presidential nominating contest in Iowa with the support of evangelicals and placed third in New Hampshire on Tuesday, wants to help bridge that divide.

"Unquestionably there is a maturing that is going on within the evangelical movement. It doesn't mean that evangelicals are any less concerned about traditional families and the sanctity of life," the former Arkansas governor said.

"It just means that they also realize that we have real responsibility in areas like disease and hunger and poverty and that these are issues that people of faith have to address," he said in an interview aboard his campaign bus.

The same issues resonated with socially conservative Catholics, he said.

For three decades evangelicals have been at the forefront of the religious right, a movement that seeks to redraw U.S. public policy along biblical lines and get motivated voters to the polls for like-minded Republican politicians.