With two days to go until the last debate before the Iowa Straw Poll, tempers are flaring between candidates bent on securing votes from social conservatives. The primary players, Governor Mike Huckabee and Senator Sam Brownback, have been in full-on back-and-forth mode for more than a week now.

The latest flare-up came on a conference call with reporters today, when Huckabee suggested that another campaign was behind a recent $85,000 ad buy from the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax organization in Washington. "I can't imagine why anybody else would get so interested," Huckabee said, just a week before the straw poll. "There's a timing issue, there's a focus issue," he said, before encouraging reporters to find out which of his rivals is hitting him.

Club spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik called Huckabee's charge "poppycock." "We want people to know about Mike Huckabee and his record," she said. The television ads spotlight Huckabee's record in Arkansas, where the Club was unhappy about what they call several tax increases, and urge Huckabee to support a bill in Congress to ban internet taxes.

Brownback's campaign denied they were behind the ads or coordinated in any way with the Club, though spokesman John Rankin couldn't resist taking a shot when the opportunity presented itself: "The Brownback campaign had absolutely nothing to do with the ads that attacked Huckabee's liberal tax and spend record as governor of Arkansas," he said in an email.

The exchange comes following a week in which a Huckabee supporter, Rev. Tim Rude, suggested that, as a "reformed Catholic" himself, he questions Brownback's judgment to convert to Catholicism. Rude has since apologized, and the Huckabee campaign denies knowledge of the incident and disapproved of Rude's language. Huckabee called Brownback "a Christian brother" in repudiating Rude's comments.

But Brownback didn't let it go and demanded an apology. By yesterday afternoon, Huckabee manager Chip Saltsman said it was time for Brownback "to stop whining and start showing some of the Christian character he seems to always find lacking in others." (As an aside, the first release referred to "Barack Osama." A correction was sent out 13 minutes later)

Both candidates are scrambling for votes from social and religious conservatives, a significant voting bloc in the Iowa caucuses and straw poll. A division of the bloc will make it much less influential come caucus time, and some have speculated that either Brownback or Huckabee will not survive a poor showing in the straw poll.