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Huckabee & Romney Battle It Out

HUME: All this as the latest FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll out today finds Giuliani slipping in the GOP horse race nationally. He's now in a virtual tie at 20 percent with John McCain and Mike Huckabee. This is a national poll now. Huckabee at 19. Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson have 11 and 10 percent respectively.

And a new "Wall Street Journal" poll comes up with a similar result. Giuliani's tied with Romney at 20, Huckabee at 17, and McCain 14 percent. Romney has not mentioned Giuliani, McCain, Fred Thompson or even Ron Paul in days. Instead, he has directed all his verbal firepower at Huckabee. And as chief political correspondent Carl Cameron reports, Huckabee is firing back.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Onboard his campaign bus in Iowa, Mike Huckabee stopped just short of calling Mitt Romney a lying phony.

MIKE HUCKABEE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think he's doing two things. He's not only being dishonest and disingenuous about my record, but he's hiding his own. And I think that's one thing voters need to understand.

CAMERON: Romney adamantly defends his criticism that Huckabee is too liberal and weak on illegal immigration and crime. Campaigning in Des Moines last night, Huckabee said Romney has not only been misleading but mean spirited.

HUCKABEE: He's been attacking me just ruthlessly in the mail and on television and distorting the record, and I think we need to get the record straightened up.

CAMERON: Huckabee tells voters that he is a conservative and governed Arkansas that way. The ordained evangelical minister warns voters that liberal media has called him a "fascist and a knuckle dragger" because he's unapologetic about his faith.

HUCKABEE: I've been attacked pretty brutally recently, in part because, I've had the audacity to say that I really do believe that we are one nation under God.

CAMERON: And he says establishment Republicans are "scared to death" of him because he spurns the elite GOP power structure in Washington.

HUCKABEE: One of the Republican muckety-mucks made the comment that nobody would ever elect a guy with the last name Huckabee. That it was a last name that sounded too much like a hick.

CAMERON: Iowa's caucuses are historically an expectations game. Huckabee plays down his chances and talks up Romney's.

HUCKABEE: And we ought to win and that's why I'm saying if we win, it would be a miracle. We'd like to be, you know, still on our feet after Iowa and hope to be that. If we come out of here in first, second, third place, we're still going. If we win, the world shifts.

CAMERON: Romney today shifted his rhetoric on his recently made claims that he "saw" his father George, the late governor of Michigan who also ran for president, marching with Martin Luther King, Jr., when, in fact, the two men were never together in a civil rights demonstration.

MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you look at the literature or look at the dictionary the term "saw," includes being aware of in the sense that I've described. It's a figure of speech and very familiar, and it's very common, and I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort.

CAMERON: Critics say the revision suggests that Romney sometimes plays loose and fast with the facts, charges he adamantly denies.

CAMERON (on camera): Romney today picked up a vote of confidence from Tom Tancredo, the Colorado congressman who put illegal immigration at the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, who was trailing badly in the polls, dropped out of the contest and endorsed Mitt Romney.

In Waterloo, Iowa, Carl Cameron, FOX News.

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Related Topics: election 2008 | huckabee | romney |

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