Mike Huckabee to rivals -- "Take a pole and shove it up your ass."

Of course, McCain is hitting back:

As the fresh attacks began to land this week in advance of Saturday's GOP primary, McCain's campaign aides and allies said they are far better prepared this time. The campaign deployed a "truth squad" of high-profile supporters to try to bat down the attacks. At a rally in Greenville on Wednesday, McCain sought to assure voters that he is ardently opposed to abortion, which he has not previously highlighted in his speeches.

And other rivals are telling him to "get over it:"

Warren Tompkins, a consultant to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney who had worked on Bush's efforts in the state, said he was discussing McCain's vocal response to the attacks with other Romney supporters as they traveled with their candidate on a bus trip across South Carolina.

"None of us can understand their obsession with reliving the 2000 campaign," Tompkins said. "They need to let the ghosts and goblins go."

Tompkins also questioned how many people would have even seen the flier had McCain's campaign not drawn so much attention to it.

And some of the same people who engineered the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry are behind the present attacks on McCain's service record this time around:

The author of the attack, a North Carolina political activist named Ted Sampley, said in an interview yesterday that he has long tormented McCain and also worked to discredit the war record of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 presidential campaign. Sampley said he mailed the leaflet to 80 news outlets in South Carolina and was pleased with the coverage it received.

"We've had a long-running battle with John McCain and his fabricated heroism," Sampley said. "We attempted to get some discussion going by sending out a flier."

And other attackers are focusing on his support for stem cell research and immigration:

Davis said the message about McCain's support for "research on the unborn" relates to his support for stem cell research. He said the amnesty message traces to bipartisan legislation McCain supported that would have provided a pathway to legal citizenship for most of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants without forcing them to return their home countries. McCain has disputed that the legislation represented amnesty.

And the group that is doing the above smears is connected with Norquist, the NRA, and the National Right to Life, groups who have always been hostile to John McCain.

And Mike Huckabee is rampaging across the state, telling his rivals to go back to their own kind:

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, told supporters Thursday in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

"In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do," Huckabee said.

In less polite terms: "Go shove it up your ass."

"Everyday, some Washington insider is coming down to South Carolina telling you not to vote for me," Huckabee told about 125 people at the Nucor Steel Berkeley plant. "My attitude is, if they were going to fix it, they should have already done it. Since they haven't, the last thing we need is them going to the White House."

And not only that, Mike Huckabee gave an interview with Beliefnet in which he equated same-sex marriages with bestiality.

Especially now. In an interview with Beliefnet.com, a religion Web site, Huck has just clarified his view that the Constitution should be amended to be brought in line with God's will -- and he directly equated homosexuality with bestiality.

Huck, in elaborating on his views that the Constitution should be subjected to Biblical standards, had just wrapped up a discussion of the fact that marriage has meant "a man and a woman in a relationship for life." With this context firmly established, this exchange followed:

QUESTIONER: Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.
HUCKABEE: Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.

The State of South Carolina is burning, folks.

Uh oh, there is plenty more:

Now, a Confederate flag group wades into the fray:

A pro-Confederate Flag third-party group is running new radio ads in South Carolina praising Mike Huckabee's pro-state's-rights stance on the flag issue -- and slamming John McCain over his repeated criticism of the controversial symbol.

"Mike Huckabee's stand is a breath of fresh air," say the ads, which are paid for by the Americans for the Preservation of American Culture. "Gov. Huckabee understands that all the average guy with a Confederate Flag on his pickup truck is saying is: He's proud to be a Southerner."

McCain has been dogged by the flag issue in South Carolina since his 2000 Presidential run; he's repeatedly denounced it, calling it a "racist symbol." There are two versions of the ad, one attacking McCain, the other attacking Romney, who's also condemned the flag.