Wallace set some of the collisions in motion. He asked Huckabee about his comment before the Iowa caucuses that Romney was running a "dishonest, desperate campaign."
That led to more back-and-forth that stretched from Romney recalling that Huckabee campaign Chairman Ed Rollins said he wanted to "kick my teeth in," to Huckabee mentioning that one of his celebrity supporters, Hollywood tough guy Chuck Norris, was outside.
"If John Wayne was here," Thompson quipped, "I'd have him beat [Norris] up."
When the subject turned to Romney's hard-edged ads, Huckabee called them "misleading." But Romney defended the ads.
"I do think that there's a difference between an attack ad, where people go after somebody based on their character, and describing someone's record," Romney said. "If people think their record or their positions is an attack ad, that's a strange thing."
Then he accused his rivals of attacking him. "Some of the ads that have come back, or some of the words that have come back, have been very different than just talking about issues," Romney said. "Sen. McCain's ad was pretty tough."
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scott.martelle@latimes.com
