Huckabee hits back in Iowa

Mike Huckabee, for weeks a punching bag for attack ads in Iowa, hit the airwaves tonight with two new TV ads in response.

Since the former Arkansas governor surged to the top of the heap in Iowa polls, he has been assailed by rival Mitt Romney and by the Club for Growth, a Washington anti-tax advocacy group, in ads criticizing his record on taxes, immigration, crime, and most recently foreign policy.

One of the new ads extolls Huckabee's record as Arkansas governor and shows Huckabee talking about the vision of the Founding Fathers.

The other ad decries the critical ads against him as "desperate and dishonest attacks" by his opponents and Washington special interests.

"If you love negative campaigning, you've got to be loving the last few days of this election," he says, speaking directly into the camera. "But if you love this country, you've got to be thinking, 'Enough is enough.' "

He calls on voters to reject negative campaigning and on his rivals to stop tearing each other down and to start building up the country for "our kids."