Huckabee on the Offensive in Iowa

Happy to Be a Target of GOP Rivals, Candidate Takes More Aggressive Tone

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, right, tours the Iowa Metal Spinners factory in Cedar Falls with company President Kevin Harberts, left, and others. Huckabee, second in the GOP polls in Iowa, is adding staff members there, is planning more advertising and has taken a more aggressive tone in speeches. (By Matthew Putney -- Waterloo Courier Via Associated Press)

VINTON, Iowa -- If Mike Huckabee is right, the millions of dollars that his rivals for the White House have poured into their campaigns have been wasted.

Buoyed by polls that show him in second place among Republicans in this state, the former Arkansas governor has turned aggressive on the stump, picking fights last week with his competitors and promising to hit the airwaves with the $1 million he raised online last month, after raising just over $2 million in the first nine months of the year. He has moved almost his entire Little Rock operation to Des Moines and is preparing to hire more staff here soon.

The onetime Baptist preacher is betting that his mix of down-home Southern charm, social conservatism and economic populism will deliver a surprise on Jan. 3, when Iowa's voters cast the first ballots of 2008. He is encouraged by a sense that he has finally become a threat -- and a target.

Last week, former senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee called Huckabee pro-life "but liberal on everything else." Iowa front-runner Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, recently accused him of supporting "special tuition breaks" for the children of illegal immigrants. And critics of his Arkansas tax policies released a Web video renewing their claims that he is a "serial tax hiker" and a liar about his record.

In response to the attacks, Huckabee flashes the toothy grin that helped him twice win the governorship of a state not all that different from Iowa. While admitting that he raised some taxes, Huckabee says he lowered 94 others and raised the gas tax for roads only after a public referendum showed strong support for the idea. He said Thompson's claims that he was "one of the highest-taxing governors that we had in this country" are "on their face just not true."

And he defends an unsuccessful proposal in Arkansas to offer college scholarships to the children of illegal immigrants, saying it is unfair to punish children for things their parents did.

"Suddenly, I seem to be in the cross hairs of every predator who is out there," Huckabee said. "As a hunter, I know that a good hunter never aims his gun at a dead carcass. You only point it at something you want to put on the wall as a trophy."

Traveling through eastern Iowa last week, Huckabee showed off his newly aggressive style in attacking his rivals on abortion and same-sex marriage, two areas in which he has a more conservative record than many of his GOP primary opponents.

"You can't say, 'I'm pro-life philosophically,' then say it's up to the states," Huckabee said in Cedar Rapids. Huckabee supports national bans on abortion and same-sex marriage, issues that Thompson has suggested should not be handled at the federal level.

At a pizza parlor in Waterloo, he said, "I didn't become pro-life after I got into politics," tweaking Romney's recent conversion on abortion rights.

And after television evangelist Pat Robertson announced that he will back former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Huckabee touted his own backing by conservative activist Donald Wildmon, who has crusaded against sex and violence on TV.

Huckabee's strategy now, with only two months until the caucuses, is simple: campaign back and forth across Iowa and hope that a wave of attention from a victory here carries him to wins in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.