DES MOINES, Iowa (AFP) — Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee was left red-faced Monday as his attack on a leading rival in the White House race lurched into farce days before the nominating battle starts.
Huckabee, the surprise success story in the Republican contest, convened a press conference to unveil his first television spot maligning the record of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who has been running his own attack ads against Huckabee in Iowa.
Huckabee, a wisecracking former governor of Arkansas who has come from nowhere in the polls, abruptly announced that he had changed his mind and would stick to the moral high road by not running the ad.
However, he then attempted to show the spot to a packed media audience. But technical gremlins set in to prevent the airing, as reporters and cameramen chortled and Huckabee looked on embarrassed.
The ordained Baptist minister went on CNN to explain his position in the increasingly nasty faceoff against Romney. Polls show the two politicians locked in a tie in Iowa, which holds the first contest in the nomination race with caucuses on Thursday.
Huckabee said "a lot" of time and money had gone into the aborted ad.
But he said: "If it costs me the caucus, it does, but I don't want to have to run an ad in which I feel like I have got to go take a shower after it's run."
Political analysts have said attack ads risk back-firing in Iowa, where voters do not take kindly to negative campaigning. But the Romney ads appear to have helped arrest Huckabee's surge in the polls.
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