Romney opens new line of attack

By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff

JOHNSTON, Iowa -- As a new Des Moines Register poll showed him trailing Mike Huckabee in Iowa, Mitt Romney also launched a fresh attack, criticizing the former Arkansas governor for suggesting that President Bush did not read the National Intelligence Estimate for four years.

"That's obviously completely inaccurate and wrong.," Romney said, unprompted by a question from reporters. "The president has kept us safe over these last six years and is extraordinarily well-versed in matters of foreign policy. I'm not sure whether Governor Huckabee did the attack as a joke, but this is not a time to be mocking our president. And it was, I think, in bad taste. I think we should come together and recognize the great work our president is doing and not take on our rhetoric or our plays from the Democratic playbook."

Romney was seizing on a report in today’s Quad City Times, in which Huckabee defended himself against accusations that he lacked familiarity with the National Intelligence Estimate last month that suggested that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

"The whole perception was based on an ambush question on the NIE report," Huckabee told the newspaper Monday. "From there, it was like, 'Wow.' That was released at 10 o'clock in the morning. At 5:30 in the afternoon, somebody says, 'Have you read the report?' Maybe I should've said, 'Have you read the report?' President Bush didn't read it for four years; I don't know why I should read it in four hours."

Kicking off a series of house parties, Romney has been casting himself as the serious alternative to the wisecracking former Arkansas governor. He has talked repeatedly about the weighty matters facing America -- radical violent jihad, the war in Iraq, the assassination last week of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Romney, who only Monday was talking about victory in Iowa, was more circumspect about his prospects today.

"There are a lot of polls going in different directions as you know," Romney said. "There's the CNN poll, the Zogby poll, the Register poll. They all say different things. It just points out that this one is just too close to call and I think it's going to get decided on Thursday in a way that will probably surprise all of us. I anticipate either getting the gold or the silver. I'd like the gold."