Mike Huckabee was surrounded in New Hampshire yesterday by a pack of press that's grown with his increasing poll numbers. Reporters asked him to respond to attacks launched by his Republican opponents on his tax and immigration records, as CNN's Anderson Cooper waited for his exclusive.

"I'm going to let Mitt Romney explain all of his positions - and there's plenty of them to explain," Huckabee said, responding to a question about his chief rival in Iowa, who recently stepped up his criticism of the former Arkansas governor. "I'm not running so much against Mitt Romney. I want to be the people's president. And that's why I think people are beginning to respond to me. They know that I believe what I believe . . . They don't hear a lot of different things from me than what I'm saying today."

Voters, meanwhile, seemed less concerned with which presidential candidate said what about whom. They asked Huckabee, who's a former Baptist preacher, about his views on the separation of church and state, his plans to reform social security and whether he'd support a military draft.

Huckabee spoke yesterday at a luncheon for the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce, on the first day of a three-day swing through the state. After lunch, Huckabee, who plays bass guitar in his own band, played "Louie Louie" with students from the Tilton School and answered their questions.

David Connor of Center Harbor went to see Huckabee at the Tilton School. After listening to him talk about how his parents scraped together $99 to buy him his first guitar and how he supports arts and music education, Connor left the auditorium with a couple of Huckabee signs tucked under his arm.

Connor said he was torn between supporting Huckabee and Romney until about two weeks ago.

"I'm a Christian, and that means a lot to me," Connor said of his decision to support Huckabee, who led Baptist congregations for 12 years in Arkansas. "If that corners me into the religious right, so be it."

Connor said he'd heard the criticisms of Huckabee, but he is willing to take the candidate's word.

"I know they say he raised taxes in Arkansas to meet a budget deficit," Connor said, "but on his website, he says he won't do that as president. I don't favor tax increases of any kind."

The Romney campaign would likely suggest Connor not vote for Huckabee, then. So would Fred Thompson's staff. As Huckabee has climbed to a close fourth place in New Hampshire, according to a Rasmussen poll released yesterday, both rivals have pointed out that Huckabee increased taxes more than 20 times on things such as gas, cigarettes and nursing home beds while he was governor.

Huckabee often says on the campaign trail that he cut taxes 94 times. Yesterday, he admitted there were some tax increases as well, but said they were "court mandates or necessitated by deficits."

"Here is the record," Huckabee said after the Concord luncheon. "The income tax when I left Arkansas was the same as it was when I went in, with the exception that we eliminated the marriage penalty, cut capital gains (and) cut out taxes on colleges savings. . . . We had the first-ever tax cuts in the history of my state in 160 years, and I did it against the headwinds of a Democrat legislature."

Huckabee also invoked Ronald Reagan. If Reagan were on the 2008 ballot, Huckabee said, his opponents would run ads against him because he promised in 1966 not to raise taxes if he were elected governor of California. But once elected, Reagan had to do so in order to balance the budget, he said.

Huckabee, whose only political experience is as a governor, also cited the iconic Republican when asked about criticisms that he doesn't have enough foreign policy expertise. "Some of our most effective presidents in terms of foreign policy would be those who did not come from the background of vast experience," Huckabee said. "Ronald Reagan was often criticized for having no foreign policy experience, having been a Hollywood actor and a governor. But within 10 years of his being president, there wasn't a Cold War, the Berlin Wall had been taken down and there wasn't a Soviet Union."

Huckabee's opponents are also trying hard to publicize the 14 ethics complaints filed against him when he was governor. Five of those resulted in violations. Two were for not reporting gifts.

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