By John Chase

OSCEOLA, Iowa -- Mike Huckabee chose a manufacturing company of hunting accessories to take aim at chief rival Mitt Romney on Saturday, accusing Romney of running misleading TV commercials that he suggested might mean he’d mislead the American public if elected president.

“You need a president who gets the job honestly because if they don’t get it honestly (they) won’t serve honestly,” Huckabee told a crowd of about 100 people Saturday morning inside the crowded lobby of the Boyt Harness Company in Osceola, Iowa. “And if I don’t tell you the truth about how I applied for the job, I probably won’t tell you the truth if I get the job.”

Huckabee said the ads questioning his decisions on taxes, immigration and crime are a distortion of the former Arkansas governor’s record. And he even defended U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of his Republican opponents running for president who has also been subject of Romney TV ads.

“The attacks that Mitt Romney has been putting out, not just on me, but now he’s putting them out on John McCain. And, look, John McCain is a rival in the presidential race, but John McCain is an honorable, decent true to heaven American hero. And it’s enough to attack me, but now to attack John McCain it’s like Mitt doesn’t have anything to stand on, except to stand against,” Huckabee said.

“I’m saying enough is enough,” he continued. “And ladies and gentlemen what I’m going to say to you today is if a person is dishonest in his approach to get the job, do you believe he will be honest in telling you the truth when he does get the job?”

Up until now, Huckabee has eschewed criticizing his Republican opponents, especially by name. But with less than a week before the leadoff caucuses on Jan. 3, he said he is “defending” himself against the barrage of “offensive” TV ads by his opponents about his record.

“I said his ads are dishonest. I certainly did. And his ads are dishonest, they’re very dishonest,” he said following a second event in Indianola. “The mail pieces, the television advertising. It’s dishonest toward me. It’s dishonest toward John McCain.”

Huckabee also took the offensive for the first time in criticizing Romney’s position on abortion. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor now running on an anti-abortion platform, has been criticized for switching positions on the issue when he decided to run for president.

“He says we’re both pro-life and I just want to point out that if he’s saying things that aren’t true about me he’s also saying things that aren’t completely true about himself,” Huckabee said.

Huckabee also acknowledged he’s received the help of Arkansas legislators who served while he was governor. At a Romney event Saturday morning, several of the legislators, calling themselves a “truth squad” criticized Romney for a recent mailing that they said distorted Huckabee’s record on immigration.

“They clarified my record,” Huckabee said. “They took a mail piece that he had sent out to Iowa homes that was completely erroneous. It was just false on every point and they were there because they were in the legislature, they knew what the facts were. And they weren’t attacking his record, they were actually defending mine and pointing out the absolute factual errors of his mail piece. So that’s what their purpose was.”

The former Arkansas governor also acknowledged making a mistake about how many Pakistanis have entered the United States illegally.

In the wake of the killing this week of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Huckabee, who has been steadily criticized for having a lack of knowledge and experienced on foreign affairs, argued on Friday the United States has to clamp down harder on illegal immigrants from Pakistan, saying 660 Pakistanis illegally entered the country last year.

Huckabee on Saturday clarified that 660 Pakistanis had entered the country over the past four years, but insisted he was still correct in his position that a crackdown is needed.

He said the United States still needs to do better securing the borders and said the events in Pakistan highlight that the issue of illegal immigration is one of national security.

“If I made it that 660 was in one year and it was in four then that clearly was a mistake, but the mistake was not in the point I was making…and getting out of the context, which I did,” he said. “By the way, it won’t be the first one that I’ve ever been guilty of making, won’t be the last one. I’ll make a bunch more. But the mistakes that I think you’ll find me making I think are going to be mistakes of a word here, a figure there, but not mistakes of the heart, not mistakes of honestly trying to put the issue in perspective.”

Huckabee’s event in Osceola was his second since Christmas featuring the same theme as hunting. The day after the holiday, Huckabee went pheasant hunting where it was reported he and the group he was with shot over the heads of a gaggle of reporters.

Huckabee disputed the report.

“Now I want to tell you that simply didn’t happen, and I can tell you why it didn’t happen,” he told the group, many of them hunters themselves. “We specifically knew that there were some reporters there, about 800 yards away, not 75 (yards). But the other thing was that, let me just assure you guys, if we’d of shot at those reporters the guy wouldn’t have written the story.”

The crowd laughed.