Sam Brownback is really on a roll. First, as The Gaggle reported earlier, he picked a fight with Mitt Romney and Tom Tancredo, paying for phone calls to Iowa voters trashing their conservative credentials. Now, with the Ames Straw Poll a little more than a week away, Brownback is trying to put the smack down on Mike Huckabee--and The Huck is smacking back. Now, your Gaggler wasn't even going to go there, because come on, two guys with poll numbers in single digits dragging each other through the mud isn't exactly race-changing news. But it's suddenly gotten all WWE or something.

It all started earlier this week, when the Brownback campaign got wind of a letter that Iowa Rev. Tim Rude, a prominent evangelical pastor and Huckabee supporter, sent to a few other church leaders in the state. In it, Rude talked up Huckabee for being a Southern Baptist and trashed Brownback for being a Catholic. "Frankly, as a recovering Catholic myself, that is all I need to know about his discernment compared to (Huckabee's)," Rude wrote. Confronted with the email on Tuesday, Rude apologized, saying his remarks weren't meant for public consumption, and they weren't intended to be "anti-Catholic." Afterwards Huckabee, in a statement, said that he was glad Rude apologized. "They were not authorized by, disseminated by, approved by, or condoned by the campaign," Huckabee said, noting that many of his staffers are Catholic. But that wasn't enough for the Brownback campaign, which demanded a more explicit apology from the former Arkansas governor. "Does Governor Huckabee denounce Pastor Rude's anti-Catholic comments, or not?" a Brownback spokesman told reporters Wednesday.