What's a Religious Conservative to do?

This is a great article about the battle for the Realigious (sic) Conservative vote in the GOP Primary. (The American Spectator--"Split Decision"). James Antle questions whether events (esp. post-Ames) might be helping to ensure that Rudy comes out of the process as the nominee--despite the fact that Religious Conservatives make up a plurality of the GOP base. Aside from his generally accurate (in my opinion) insights, I had two observations.

First, I think that Antle has a too-limited view of the process; he writes, ". . . the social conservatives in the race have been ignoring the pro-choice, pro-civil unions frontrunner and instead cannibalizing each other." But I think Antle fails to see that some acrimony is inevitable in winnowing out the field or settling on a Religious Conservative candidate. This amounts to "public" vetting of the candidates, as Antle references in the article's first paragraph: "Whenever a top-tier candidate presents himself as a more conservative alternative to Rudy Giuliani or John McCain, disturbing news soon emerges about his past record." There is a similar--more nit-picky process among the second-tier folks, but it is something that has to play out. People are loathe to pick a candidate and then have to admit they settled on him/her in haste.

Second, I think that it will be important for Huckabee to jettison the "Baptist Preacher" label asap. Though I am Southern Baptist in my roots, and though I realize that Evangelical voters will have an inherent ideological comfort level with Huckabee based on this aspect of his resume, I believe that his greatest strength is that he has both real-world executive experience and a fully-formed, seasoned and well-worn worldview. I think too much of the coverage of him to date has focused on the more-marginalizing aspect of his resume (as far as average voters are concerned) than the bandwagon-enhancing aspect of his resume.