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The primary race is interesting. Hardliners battle for candidacy and then revert to populist rhetoric for the general election. Mitt Romeny and Mike Huckabee are fighting for the sympathies of the religious conservatives but don’t expect the battle to stay out of the gutter. Here’s the latest:
Dec 15 12:29 PM US/Eastern
By JIM KUHNHENN
Associated Press Writer

HUMBOLDT, Iowa (AP) - Mitt Romney accused Republican presidential rival Mike Huckabee of “running from the wrong party” for criticizing President Bush’s foreign policy as an “arrogant bunker mentality.”

Romney defended Bush against Huckabee’s charge, which the former Arkansas governor leveled in the January-February issue of the respected journal Foreign Affairs.

“I can’t believe he’d say that,” Romney said to a gathering of about 100 supporters in a restaurant here. “I had to look again—did this come from Barack Obama or from Hillary Clinton? By JIM KUHNHENN
Associated Press Writer

Did it come from John Edwards? No, it was Governor Huckabee.”

Romney has been aggressively criticizing Huckabee, stressing differences over immigration and economic policy in hopes of recapturing a lead he had enjoyed in Iowa for most of the year. Huckabee’s Foreign Affairs article, made public Friday, offered another line of attack.

“I’m the last person to say that this administration is subject to an arrogant, bunker mentality that is counterproductive here and abroad,” he said. “The truth of the matter is this president has kept us safe these past six years and that has not been easy to do.”

Still, Romney carefully stressed that he believed the administration had engaged in missteps during the war in Iraq and said his defense of Bush did not mean he would follow the president’s current policy to the letter.

“We were under-prepared and under-planned and understaffed,” he said of the war following the fall of Saddam Hussein. “There is no question we weren’t perfectly managed.”

Romney would not go as far as suggesting that Huckabee’s written views indicated he was not ready for the presidency, turning aside a reporter’s question by saying “I’m going to let other people make that assessment.”

But Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said the article “suggests that he does lack depth when it comes to dealing with other nations.”