The NRO's Jim Geraghty on Huckabee's false claims in the attack ad that was, then wasn't, then was, then wasn't...

Adding to the theory that the Huckabee's negative ad was never meant to run: It knocked Mitt Romney for "no executions." Of course, Massachusetts doesn't have the death penalty. I suppose Romney could have just gone out and killed somebody - I understand the opposition party in that state is big on leaving people in cars underwater. But it seems unfair to suggest that Romney was somehow soft on crime because his state never legalized the death penalty. (Others would find other supporting arguments for that assertion.)

Had that ad run, the silliness of that line of attack probably would have dominated the final 48 hours of the campaign, and Huckabee, or someone around him must have known that the discussion would not go well for them...

UPDATE: Interesting information from another campaign that does not have a dog in the fight of Iowa, or not a particularly large one, at least.

First, they note a August 21, 2002 article in the Boston Herald that declared, “Republican Mitt Romney and running mate Kerry Healey rolled out a crime-fighting plan yesterday that would … reinstate the death penalty.”

Then they note an April 29, 2005 Boston Globe article: “Governor Mitt Romney yesterday filed a long-awaited bill to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts for deadly acts of terrorism, killing sprees, murders involving torture, and the killing of law enforcement authorities. The bill, which Romney called ‘a model for the nation’ and the ‘gold standard’ for capital punishment legislation, draws entirely from the findings of a special commission that set out 10 recommendations last year. That panel sought to design a virtually ‘foolproof’ death penalty law by relying on verifiable science and tougher legal safeguards.”

Then a Globe article from December 16 of that year, noting, “Even on reinstating the death penalty, a hot-button issue on which polls have indicated that Romney had popular support, the governor lost a vote in the house by nearly 2 to 1. Eight years earlier, a capital punishment bill failed on a tie vote.”...

So Mr. Huckabee didn't want to risk his soul by running a negative ad (full of errors) against Romney (and of course showed it to a room full of the press who, of course, would never show it to the public).

However, it appears the ad has been running for the last day or two (via Hugh Hewitt):

Remember that ad attacking Mitt Romney that Mike Huckabee unveiled at a press conference before announcing that he wouldn't be running the ad?

Well, it turns out that the ad, which attacked Romney on a host of fronts, seems to have run on Iowa television anyway -- at least a day and half after Huck promised at the presser he'd pull it, touting his decision as proof of what a noble campaign he's run.

This morning, a reader reported to us that the ad ran last night in Cedar Rapids, on TNT, during a rerun of Law and Order. And a day of run-arounds by the local cable company and unreturned calls by from the Huckabee campaign makes it pretty clear our reader is right.

We've spent a fair amount of time trying to track this one down. First we checked in with a low-level official at the cable provider, an outfit called Mediacom. They put us in touch with the people who do their ad booking, a company called Onmedia. The people at Onmedia were friendly and helpful and went back to check for us -- but once they did, the higher-ups abruptly clammed up and stopped returning our calls.

Then we went to a higher level official at Mediacom. This official, Thomas Larsen, would not confirm or deny that the ad had run. But he did confirm that on Monday they received an order from the Huckabee campaign to yank an ad -- and that the ad hadn't in fact been yanked until today.