Mike Huckabee was interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room following today’s debate. Transcript follows…

BLITZER: Mike Huckabee walked into this final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses on January 3rd in a whole new position. The former underdog now is a top contender, if not the top contender, for this first presidential contest of the primary season. And that also makes him, of course, the targets for some scathing attacks and some fierce scrutiny. He understands that.

The former Arkansas governor is joining us now from the site of this debate.

Governor, thanks very much for coming in.

And let me ask you right away, what did you think? How did you do?

MIKE HUCKABEE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I think the debate went fine. It was frankly a little less fireworks than I anticipated, but believe me, Wolf, I’m very fine with that. I was kind of anticipating there would be blood on the floor, most of it mine. And fortunately, I came out with — without a Band-Aid.

BLITZER: And that’s from your standpoint very good, because you now are in all of these most recent polls in Iowa the favorite right now to win. And that normally means you have a bull’s eye, but I didn’t see a lot of these candidates really directing their aim at you during these 90 minutes.

HUCKABEE: Well, I didn’t, either. I think they’ve saved it for the mail and for television, because there’s sure enough of that out there.

The post office is having a heck of a month, and Christmas has nothing to do with it, in Iowa. A lot of mail pieces out there, a lot of negative TV ads. We’ll see how it works.

I don’t think it’s going to. I think it’s going to have a sort of a counter-effect, but if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I just am convinced that people here want a positive campaign, and that’s what we’re trying to give them. I think that’s why we’re ahead right now.

BLITZER: All right. “The New York Times” Sunday magazine has a long profile of you, and one line has jumped out and is causing a lot of commotion right now.

When you asked this question to the interviewer, the reporter who wrote the story, you said this: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” Now, as you know, Mormons say that’s a canard, they don’t believe that, that’s been a canard spread by people who don’t like Mormonism.

I want you to explain what you were doing by even raising that question.

HUCKABEE: Actually if you’ll talk to the reporter, because he was shocked that that was characterized out of an 8,100-word story, as we were, we thought, good heavens. We were having a conversation. It was over several hours, and the conversation was about religion, and he was trying to press me on my thoughts of Mitt Romney’s religion.

And I said I don’t want to go there. I don’t know that much about it.
I barely know enough about being a Baptist. And I really didn’t know.

Well, he was telling me things about the Mormon faith, because he frankly is fairly well-schooled on comparative religions. And so as a part of that conversation, I asked the question, because I had heard that, and I asked it not to create something — I never thought it would make the story.

After the debate today I went to Mitt Romney and apologized to him, because I said, I would never try, ever, to try to somehow pick out some point of your faith and make it, you know, an issue, and I wouldn’t.
I’ve stayed away from talking about Mitt Romney’s faith. And I told him face to face, I said, “I don’t think your being a Mormon ought to make you more or less qualified for being a president.” That has been my position.

Wolf, everybody I’ve talked to just about wants me to come out and say something about Mitt Romney’s faith. I’ve not taken the bait, but if I don’t say something, they say that my avoiding it is really an underlying statement. If I do say anything, then I’m attacking him.

So I’m not sure how to deal with that, but I certainly am not in any way getting into that. And as I said to him, I say to you, I don’t think his particular religion is a factor in whether or not people should vote for him or against him.

I’d like to think that my being a Baptist isn’t a factor in people voting for or against me, although in Arkansas, when people say, are the Baptists active in your campaign, I always say they’re all active, half for me and half of them against me, but it certainly didn’t mean that they automatically voted for me.

BLITZER: So how did he react, Mitt Romney, when you went up to him and you said — you apologized, I guess, for that one quote?

HUCKABEE: Well, he was gracious. You know, I hope he knows it was sincere. But, you know, I’m trying to stay away from everything I can say. I’m being much more cautious now, because everything is being parsed.

And heck, not just the things I’m saying now, but, you know, we have got a lot of people dumpster-diving right now in the political process, and they’re going through every old wastebasket they can find to dig up anything I have ever said, but I understand. I went through this in Arkansas, it’s part of the political process. It’s not something I’m shocked by, not something I wasn’t expecting.

If anything, I’m kind of delighted that it’s happening, because there’s no way that this wouldn’t be happening if I wasn’t scaring some people to death.

BLITZER: By a lot of estimates, Governor, you’re going to win in Iowa, at least if the election were today, the caucuses were today. But people are saying, you know what? He doesn’t have the organization, he doesn’t have the money to really take that win in Iowa and really go anywhere, because in New Hampshire it’s a much different picture.

What do you say to those cynics out there who say, you know, even if you win in Iowa, it’s not going to mean a whole lot?

HUCKABEE: Well, whatever we do, somebody has an excuse for why it’s not enough. I was never supposed to be here, remember? I was the guy that wouldn’t get past the spring. I was the guy that wouldn’t make it through the summer.

I was the guy that would be a second-tier candidate through the whole process and wouldn’t even get to the caucuses. So everything that’s been written about my political obituary so far has been wrong.
Hopefully it still will be.

I just am always reminded that a ragtag army of under-equipped, under-financed, under-trained and under-prepared people won the Revolutionary War. Underdogs always have a history, and it’s not — there’s an old saying in the South — it’s not the side of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog that determines the outcome. And there’s a lot of fight in this dog.

I’ve been through a tough battle in Arkansas, fought the Clinton political machine and beat it four times. I understand something about the kind of political environment in which I’m playing just because I’ve had to win as a Republican in a state that didn’t have any. So the fight in this dog is ready for it.

BLITZER: Well, you better get ready, because you’ve got three weeks now before Iowa, and I suspect it’s going to get heated, even more heated than it is right now.

Governor, you’ve had a long day already, and I suspect your day is only just beginning. Thanks for spending a few moments with us here in THE SITUATION ROOM.

HUCKABEE: Glad to do it, Wolf. Thanks for having me back.

BLITZER: All right.