FORT DODGE, IOWA — Mitt Romney raced across this snowbound farm state in a private jet. His rival Mike Huckabee made do with a bus.
Romney struck a belligerent tone: He called Huckabee soft on crime and disloyal to President Bush, amplifying the assault with mail, radio and TV attacks.
Huckabee struck back, telling a Davenport crowd that Huckabee's leniency "would be real news to the 16 people whose executions I carried out" as governor of Arkansas. His manner, though, was relaxed, his barbs less pointed than Romney's.
With Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses less than two weeks away, the clash between former Massachusetts Gov. Romney and Huckabee has turned into a central drama of the contest that will open the 2008 race for the White House. The brawling grew nastier this week as the two crisscrossed Iowa.
Nationally, the race for the Republican nomination remains wide open. Two of the contenders thought to be most viable, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, have fared poorly in Iowa polls and put their strongest efforts into other states. Former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, who also has faltered in Iowa, is attempting a comeback.
For Huckabee and Romney, however, a strong finish in Iowa is considered crucial to their White House ambitions.
Romney has banked on an Iowa win to propel him to a primary victory five days later in New Hampshire -- and then onward to the nomination. Through the summer and fall, he held a double-digit lead in Iowa, thanks largely to a torrent of early TV advertising.
But Huckabee's roaring surge recently from afterthought to Republican front-runner in Iowa has upended Romney's strategy.
As Romney darted this week from Davenport to West Des Moines, Indianola, Fort Dodge, Orange City and Council Bluffs, he was fighting for survival. For the most part, that entailed hammering away at Huckabee.
Arkansas faced big troubles with methamphetamine abuse during Huckabee's 10 years as governor, Romney said, yet Huckabee moved to reduce mandatory sentences for users. Romney also suggested that Huckabee was too quick to pardon convicts, boasting of his own refusal to grant reprieves to prisoners in Massachusetts.
"When it comes to deciding who's going to be the toughest who deals with criminals, there's no question but that my record suggests that giving out no pardons is a heck of a lot better than giving out 1,033 pardons," Romney told reporters at a trucking-company warehouse in Fort Dodge.
