INDIANOLA, Iowa -- In December, 2005, then-Arkansas Governor and National Governors' Association head Mike Huckabee sat down with two reporters aboard a dinner cruise boat anchored in the Potomac River in Southwest Washington. Then, the governor took questions from a reporter with Stateline.org and this scribe, at the time with The Hotline.

Things change, and quickly. Today, in front of a packed house of hundreds of supporters at a restaurant here, Huckabee spent twenty minutes taking questions from reporters with every major news organization in the country. Then, Huckabee merited the attention of a single public relations consultant. Today, former Arkansas Senator Tim Hutchison, Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist, campaign manager Chip Saltsman and top strategist Ed Rollins stood back to let the candidate speak.

Then, Huckabee's campaign merited little more than the occasional mention in his hometown paper. Today, Huckabee is leading the RCP Iowa Average by two points, ahead of Mitt Romney, who Huckabee asserts has outspent him by a factor of twenty in Iowa alone. In dueling rallies in this small college town, Huckabee even outdrew Rudy Giuliani, the closest thing the Republican field has to a celebrity candidate. Giuliani's appearance, just a block away from Huckabee's, packed a local deli, but the venue and the crowd were smaller.

Huckabee and Romney, locked in a bitter battle for the state's convention delegates, have spent the last several weeks going back and forth on charges of inconsistency over a number of issues. Today, Huckabee took the opportunity to take new shots, calling Romney's advertisements dishonest. "It's dishonest toward me, it's dishonest toward John McCain," Huckabee said. "That's really what, I think, this race comes down to, is the integrity and honesty with which we are approaching it."

Asked point blank whether Romney himself is dishonest, Huckabee toed the line. "He's being dishonest about my record and John McCain's, and Rudy Giuliani's, and I think he's certainly being dishonest about his own record." Romney has "spent millions and million of dollars," Huckabee continued. "I'm sure there's a feeling of frustration. You're not supposed to be behind when you're spending that kind of money."

Huckabee's new attacks on Romney came as the former Massachusetts chief executive opens an advertising campaign hitting McCain in New Hampshire. Romney began running advertisements against Huckabee as his lead in Iowa slipped, and eventually succumbed to Huckabee's meteoric rise. Hoping to head off similar results in New Hampshire, where McCain is surging, Romney started running new ads against the senator there.

That, said Rollins, pushed Huckabee over the edge. "He saw the ad against McCain, and he said, 'This is ridiculous. You can't attack an American hero.'" Rollins said there had been no contact between the two campaigns.

Like Huckabee, McCain has fought back. After leaking a possible attack ad to Slate, McCain launched a hit on Romney yesterday in New Hampshire. Today, he was even more blunt when asked to respond to Romney's latest charges. "Never get into a wrestling match with a pig," McCain told reporters aboard the Straight Talk Express. "You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."

Back in Indianola, the media horde and jam-packed crowd told of Huckabee's newfound status as a top contender. Outside, Huckabee's bus idled next to a bus for traveling reporters. By the curb, CSPAN's traveling bus waited for a live interview with the candidate, and a bus for FairTax supporters, a key component of Huckabee's rise, sat at the end of the block. Voters, too, were excited. "I like any Republican who has values that will stick to them," said Michelle Steen, who publishes a Christian newspaper in Indianola. "We have a big Huckabee sign by our driveway on the highway."

Romney had few fans among the mostly older crowd. Asked if she would consider supporting Romney, Patricia Fetters, Steen's mother, said no. "I wouldn't be interested," she said. Pressed for a reason, she laughed. "I hate to say. If you weren't taping me," she trailed off. Her daughter was less circumspect. "I do question Mormonism," Steen said.

For others, it was Romney's perceived changes of heart that concerned them. "I guess I'm just not comfortable with him as far as his changes of his positions in the past," said Greg Abbott. "I mean, people can change, but I'm not exactly comfortable with how he's come about that."

All is not lost for Romney yet, however, largely because, to many voters, Huckabee has not locked in their support. Abbott, who said he is concerned that Huckabee's experience in foreign policy may be lacking. "As a governor, that'd probably be a weaker area, at least an area he has not thought about a lot." Despite the Huckabee sticker on his shirt, Abbott is also considering casting a vote for Fred Thompson.

Fetters says she's heard good things about Duncan Hunter, though Steen, who said she liked former candidate Tom Tancredo, is more in Huckabee's corner. "Huckabee is my choice right now," Steen said. "But I still will keep listening. I'm not, you know, set in stone."