Mike Huckabee Tracker

In what may signal a setback to the coalition promoting school vouchers and other forms of government aid to private and parochial school parents, a surging candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination has warned that such programs may undermine public education.

Surprisingly, the political heresy came from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister who nine years ago urged conservative Christians to “take back the nation for Christ.”

In a wide-ranging Jewish Week interview, Huckabee — whose surprising second-place finish in Iowa’s Republican straw poll last month vaulted him toward the top tier of GOP contenders — also broke with GOP frontrunners who shun talking to Syria and Iran, although he said he does not necessarily favor high-level “negotiations.”

And he expressed mystification at the reluctance of Jewish voters to abandon the Democrats.