The next big debate: Eating chicken?

They've faced off over immigration. They've haggled over taxes. They've fought over pardons.

Now, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are being given the chance to debate the finer points of eating fried chicken.

It's a marketing gimmick by Kentucky Fried Chicken, playing off an episode last week in Florida when Romney stopped by a KFC restaurant and stripped the skin off a breast before dining. That prompted Huckabee, who had a well-known love for all things fried before he went on a diet and lost 110 pounds, to mock Romney.

"Any Southerner knows that if you're not gonna eat the skin, don't bother with calling it fried chicken," Huckabee told reporters. "I'm glad to hear that [Romney] did that because that means I'm going to win Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma -- all these great Southern states that understand that the best part of fried chicken is the skin."

If the former Arkansas governor does win those Super Tuesday states, it could deal a mortal blow to Romney, who hopes to do well in those places to offset rival John McCain's strength in California, the West, and the Northeast.

Today, Gregg Dedrick, president of KFC, issued an open letter to the candidates.

"While you may have varying viewpoints on current hot-button issues, we recently learned fried chicken gets both your 'yea' votes. However, the similarities end there as one of you prefers the Colonel’s Original Recipe in all its glory, the other prefers a skin-free meal eaten with a knife and fork," Dedrick wrote.

"In keeping with KFC’s tradition of Southern Hospitality made famous by our founder Colonel Sanders, we’d like to invite you both to stop into a KFC along the campaign trail, share a bucket of the Colonel’s Original Recipe together and debate your position on fried chicken eating etiquette -- we'll call it a 'Supper Tuesday' fried chicken debate.