While most presidential candidates spent their evenings in Iowa lobbying for last-minute caucus support, Mike Huckabee made a quick jaunt to California to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Leno welcomed Huckabee on his first night back from his hiatus due to the television writers' strike. The host mentioned Caucus Day in his self-written monologue, joking that the day was also known as "the only time anyone pays any attention to Iowa."

The former Arkansas governor spent some of his interview discussing the Monday news conference in which he cancelled a negative ad campaign against Mitt Romney, only to show the ad to the assembled press. He said that if he had really meant to be disingenuous, he would have had his change of heart after the ad run began.

"It's a full-contact sport," Huckabee said of his tussle with Romney. "At the time you think, 'This is what we have to do.'"

He also plugged his fair tax system, which he said would not tax American productivity and would actually "untax the poor."

"It's really a progressive tax system," Huckabee said. "It frees people up to earn as much as they want."

Huckabee's campaign issued a press release Wednesday addressing criticism he had received for crossing picket lines to appear on the show. In the release, the campaign said "The Governor would only agree to join Jay, an active member of the Writers Guild, for the taping after he was assured that no replacement writers were being used in the show's production. Governor Huckabee believes that the writers deserve to be fairly compensated for the sale of their work."

Huckabee is back in Iowa Thursday morning, kicking caucus day off with an 8:30 stop in Burlington.

Labels: Republicans