Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee may have elevated his candidacy to his party’s upper tier -- at least in his and his supporters' minds -- but his choice of campaign accommodations and travel haven’t improved much.

He thinks a stay at a Holiday Inn is “luxurious.” It's hard to imagine Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani thinking the same. And while his fellow candidates travel in large entourages neatly packed into convoys of black SUVs, Huckabee says he gives local cabbies and car-rental outlets lots of business.

“I finally put my foot down about subpar accommodations earlier this year,” said the former Arkansas governor. “I understand frugal and budget but there was a place my staff had me stay near Houston that was so bad that I was the only person in the hotel that did not have tattoos, metal objects piercing my face -- and wore sleeves.”

Meet Mike Huckabee -- the preacher-man from the South who, by some accounts, is beating the presidential-expectations game. He is the great communicator whom no one has heard about. That is, until now.

Huckabee is rising among the GOP candidates, not by money. (He has little.) Nor by establishment support. (He has none.) And not by slick television or radio ads. (Again, no money.)

Huckabee is there because he has earned it, says Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Harrisburg. “It’s pretty simple. This is a guy who brought the house down at the Values Voter Summit, wins or comes close to winning every debate, shocked everyone by placing second in the Ames, Iowa, straw poll and is now inching toward the top of the polls in the Iowa caucuses.”

Though he's still well behind poll-topping Mitt Romney. And facing growing criticism from some in the conservative establishment.

The Club for Growth's Pat Toomey says the party's "flirtation" with Huckabee "does a great disservice to the conservative movement" if it overlooks his "stunning record of big-government liberalism." And National Review editor Rich Lowry adds that "for all his eloquence, what Huckabee lacks, fundamentally, is a message."

But Gerow says Huckabee could be dangerous to the Democrats “because he can galvanize the base.” And Democrat strategist John Lapp says Huckabee would awake that sleeping giant -- the Republican base. He'd be the Democrats’ worst nightmare “if only he had money," Lapp says.

"His threat comes from all over -- his executive experience as a governor, his own personal success story. And he has the steadiest hand and is the most optimistic out of the GOP bunch.”

Huckabee predicts he will survive Iowa and surprise in New Hampshire, where the state's Republican chairman, Fergus Cullen, reports that Huckabee "is doing solid. While he is still in the ‘getting to know you’ stage, he has proven to be the best communicator of all of the candidates and has earned some impressive local endorsements.”

According to the average of voter polls in Iowa posted at RealClearPolitics.com, Huckabee still trails Romney by 12.5 points, 26.3 percent to 13.8 percent. But he is virtually neck-and-neck with second-place Fred Thompson (15 percent).

In New Hampshire, the most recent Rasmussen poll shows Huckabee a distant fourth -- at 10 percent compared to leader Romney's 28 percent -- but improving.

But Huckabee appears to be cashing in on that "Huckappeal." With donations and hits to his Web site that, he says, “everyday surpasses the day before,” he is like the tortoise racing the hare -- going slow, steady and uphill, attempting to defy the conventional wisdom.