The new religious right is epitomised by people like influential Florida pastor Joel Hunter, who was anointed to lead the Christian Coalition but never assumed the position when it balked at his attempts to embrace issues like poverty and global warming.
Hunter - who is also strongly opposed to abortion rights - has come out in support of Huckabee.
"Joel Hunter ... is one of my key backers. He and his wife are strong with me," Huckabee said.
Analysts say Huckabee's agenda breaks with the traditional religious right and could produce strains in the Republican Party.
"Huckabee and Hunter represent political developments within the evangelical community that are apart from the organised religious right and may become a challenge to those organisations," said John Green, a professor of politics at the University of Akron in Ohio and a leading expert on the subject.
"Your old religious right found a certain comfort level within the party by accepting the economic interests of the business community - and the business community accepted the legitimacy of the social issue agenda. Folks like Hunter and Huckabee may well upset this accommodation," he said.
Huckabee has stressed his support for the "little guy" and polling in Iowa showed him with solid support among blue-collar Republicans.
His call to replace income tax with a consumption tax is widely seen as regressive and is viewed with skepticism by most economists. Huckabee himself says it would be politically difficult to pull off.
"I would always work for lower taxes particularly on small businesses and families," he said.
Huckabee's mixing of economic populism with a conservative social agenda has struck a chord with the foot soldiers of the old religious right.
"Home-schoolers, televangelists, and pro-life advocates can fit very comfortably within this populism because it stresses conservative moral values and it also recognises their class and community interests," Green said.
