The blogger Ross Douthat has discovered a previously unknown psychological condition he calls “Huckenfreude.”

Douthat defines it as “Pleasure derived from the outrage of prominent conservative pundits over the rising poll numbers of Mike Huckabee. Particularly sharp when the pundits in question are partisans of Rudy Giuliani, but extends to supporters of Mitt Romney as well.

Usually experienced by evangelicals, crunchy cons, populists, and other un-airbrushed elements of the conservative coalition.”

It’s true; there is a bit of Huckenfreude out there. I’ve had the occasional mild bout of it myself. But for some, the source of Huckenfreude may have less to do with partisanship for Giuliani or Romney than with the simple human urge to root for — or at least sympathize with — the underdog.

At the moment, Huckabee is having the best underdog run in recent memory.

Through his own shrewdness and political gifts, he is confounding his better-funded, better-staffed, better-everythinged opponents.

His campaign is nimble, quick-moving and smart, and that has made it extremely hard for the other campaigns to get a handle on him.

Just look at some of the TV ads he has released: the Chuck Norris ad, the “Christian leader” ad, the Christmas ad.

They have absolutely nothing in common with each other. People on opposing teams look for patterns, for consistent errors they can exploit. But with Huckabee, nobody quite knows what’s coming next.

And he’s done it with virtually nothing.

At the point Huckabee surpassed Mitt Romney in Iowa polls, he had spent about $325,000 in the state — next to Romney’s $7 million.

Now, although Huckabee is pulling in some money, the discrepancy is probably bigger.

And yet, for all the millions he has spent, for all the careful planning he has done, for all the strategic audits of the race he has commissioned, Romney can’t shake Huckabee.

This is a very old story — the big, rich, traditional army flummoxed by the small, poor, nontraditional band of guerrillas.

You could see that in The Washington Post’s account, published this week, of a network of home-schooling parents who have helped Huckabee in Iowa.

One woman, using a picture of Huckabee, paper, scissors, and a copy machine, made her own campaign literature for Huckabee and began spreading it around.

She spent $38 of her own money to buy a small-town newspaper ad for Huckabee.

That’s the kind of support Romney has had to pay for. Huckabee got it for free.

When a candidate inspires loyalty like that — even if it’s entirely possible that he’s headed for big defeats down the road — he finds people, even people who don’t support him, pulling for him.

And when commentators start attacking him, those same people feel that touch of Huckenfreude.

Of course, it may not last long. Huckabee may have already peaked, and we just don’t know it yet.

That’s the thing about a candidate’s trajectory: You never know where it is right now. We know what it was a week ago, but changes could be taking place that we just haven’t seen yet.
It certainly wouldn’t be a surprise to see Huckabee slide a bit in the polls, if only because he has been subjected to a barrage of negative ads, negative news stories and negative commentary.

No single story has caused a full-scale frenzy. The worry for the Huckabee campaign is that their cumulative effect will be to leave the impression in voters that Huckabee isn’t what he seems, that he has done something wrong. Didn’t he let that murderer go? Did you hear how much he raised taxes?

On the other hand, they might all blend together in an undifferentiated noise, leaving Huckabee none the worse for wear.

And there’s one more possibility: that the opposition of other Republican candidates and conservative commentators — the group Huckabee calls “the Wall Street-to-Washington axis” — might help Huckabee with those voters who are most inclined to support him.

On the “Today” show yesterday, Huckabee dismissed the concerns of those elites on Wall Street and in Washington. “They don’t control me,” he said.

At the same time he dismisses all those silk-stockinged swells who oppose him, Huckabee touts the concerns of evangelicals — hunger, poverty, disease — that have not traditionally been part of GOP campaigns.

Yes, he might fade. But Huckabee represents a certain degree of turmoil inside the Republican Party. No matter what happens to him, that won’t go away.