THE NOTE: Romney Picks Fight with Huckabee

Dec. 11, 2007 -- Somewhere, Rudy Giuliani is smiling.

No, it's not that Tim Russert has asked him another question about his business interests. And it's not that crippling winter storms are disrupting his rivals' travel plans in Iowa (the state Giuliani would still rather wasn't on the early-voting map). It's not even that the Yankees are alive in the Johan Santana sweepstakes.

It's that Mitt Romney has become the first presidential candidate to cross the negative-ad threshold -- and he did it not by taking on Giuliani, the national frontrunner, but by blasting Mike Huckabee.

Forget the kindling strategy, the fund-raising records, the teams of seasoned advisers and activists, the straw poll victory, even The Speech. It comes down to this for Romney, R-Mass.: He cannot lose Iowa to Huckabee.

"Romney is suddenly running scared as Huckabee has overtaken him in several polls of Iowa caucus-goers," Michael Shear writes in The Washington Post. "The decision to go negative on television is fraught with peril. . . . But Romney may have no choice."

Surely Romney advisers figured the battle by now would be between him and Giuliani, or maybe him and Fred Thompson, or even John McCain. But by engaging Huckabee, R-Ark., directly on immigration, Romney is indicating that he will live or die by the early-state strategy he's pursued for the better part of a year.

"The elevated rhetoric -- including the Romney campaign's mass e-mailing Monday of an anti-Huckabee Web column -- reflects a growing sense of urgency within its headquarters, where the game plan all year has been predicated on bowling over rivals with victories in lead-voting Iowa and New Hampshire," the AP's Glen Johnson and Liz Sidoti report.

Romney's new ad goes out of its way to praise Huckabee, which "seems to suggest the Romney campaign is wary of a frontal assault in Iowa," ABC's John Berman reports. The ad is accurate. But the takeaway sentences -- that Huckabee "supported in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants," and "even supported taxpayer-funded scholarships for illegal aliens," aren't playing nice.

Leaving aside the ironies of a man derided as "Multiple-Choice Mitt" calling an ad "Choice: The Record" (and don't think his rivals will), Romney is testing another key assumption: That immigration is the issue that will trump all others with GOP primary voters.

The ad comes at a moment where Huckabee's record as governor is coming in for an unattractive close-up. (Ten months' worth of oppo-research being dropped on his head in two weeks - - welcome, governor, to the top tier.)

And those fund-raising totals begin to matter now that Huckabee is badly outgunned in getting his new message - - an ad calling for a border fence and "no amnesty" - - into Iowa circulation.

But Huckabee won't be so easy to beat back (despite the ice storm's disruption of his Iowa schedule).

People like him and seem to relate to him in a way they don't with Romney. He's peaking at the right moment. And he has exploded onto the national scene in a way that Romney simply hasn't. "Taking down Huckabee the Candidate means taking down Huckabee the Man, and that requires the kind of nuclear blast no one is yet inclined to launch," writes Mark Halperin of Time and ABC News.

Two new national polls have Huckabee running a close second behind Giuliani, R-N.Y., despite Romney's millions. By the (rather similar) numbers: NYT/CBS has it Giuliani 22, Huckabee 21, Romney 16, McCain 7, Thompson 7. CNN/Opinion Research Corporation: Giuliani 24, Huckabee 22, Romney 16, McCain 13, Thompson 10.

"Three weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters across the country appear uninspired by their field of presidential candidates, with a vast majority saying they have not made a final decision about whom to support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll," the Times' Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee report. "And in a sign of the fluidity of the race, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who barely registered in early polls several months ago, is now locked in a tight contest nationally."

Romney's seen the numbers, and thus this hopeful tone: "First was the McCain surge, then the Giuliani surge, and then the Fred Thompson surge, and now it's the Mike Huckabee surge," Romney told ABC's Charles Gibson. "And in the past, what's happened is, when the surge occurs, people look more closely at the record of the vision of the person running . . . and inevitably the surge kinda deflates. I think you will see the same thing here. I sure hope so."

Huckabee is continuing to get a thorough press beating. The latest drip -- from the AP's Andrew DeMillo -- raises the Wayne DuMond case anew by reporting that "Mike Huckabee had a hand in twice as many pardons and commutations as his three predecessors combined."

"From paroles issued during his 10 years as governor, to his presiding over a net tax increase to his past comments on Christianity and AIDS, Mr. Huckabee is now on the hot seat," the Washington Times' Stephen Dinan reports.

(And don't miss Tony Perkins firing a warning shot at oppo-researchers: Back down on the faith front, or get ready for "the tsunami of support that he will get from Christians who are tired of the elites who belittle their beliefs and attempt to rob them of every public reflection of their faith.")

This is where Rudy comes in: "The highest electoral hope of the Huckabee candidacy seems to be to provide the necessary confusion to nominate Rudy Giuliani for the presidency," Romney backer Paul Erickson tells Dinan.

Can Rudy last in the lead? "Like the city he once ran, Mr. Giuliani on the campaign trail is also turning out to be more resilient than expected -- drawing on decades of retail politics in New York as he works crowds with ease and vigor," Jonathan Kaufman writes in The Wall Street Journal. "What his supporters and opponents are wondering is whether these moves and his campaign skills will be enough to overcome the hurdles that are coming into clearer and closer view."