ABC News reports that there’s something of a Romney-Huckabee showdown brewing in Michigan. Mike Huckabee aims to exploit Michigan’s Evangelical vote in a bid to douse Romney’s full court press in the northern state from which he hails. Ed Rollins, national chairman for the Huckabee campaign said:

There were two groups of voters who would be amenable to Huckabee’s message: Evangelicals open to his faith and values, and disaffected former “Reagan Democrats” who helped then-President Ronald Reagan win overwhelmingly in his 1984 re-election campaign, then helmed by Rollins.

Romney’s has pulled his TV ads in South Carolina and Florida to focus on Michigan. Things could get particularly nasty if Huck tries to pit Evangelicals against the hometown Mormon. Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems that since Iowa the religious angle has been absent, mercifully, from campaign coverage.

Huckabee has a history of using shock-jock-type antics for political advantage–from moving his family into a trailer to working a full day at a DMV. With him using his time in South Carolina planning ahead for Michigan, one cringes at the prospect of the coming spectacle. Some say the Romney campaign, which is hemorrhaging, needs Michigan to survive. The ultimate beneficiary of this bloody face-off may be slow-and-steady John McCain (who recently earned endorsements from the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press).