Huckabee faded steadily after Iowa, but held on in hopes that the South would pull him even, refilling his campaign coffers and giving him the legs to compete in the delegate-rich states. That turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment as McCain and Romney performed strongly in the South and stole the wind from his sails.

When it became clear that he couldn't win, Huckabee pivoted, effectively running for the 2012 nomination in 2008. He maintained his campaign long after it was obvious that McCain could not be caught, building support and the bones of an organization in all parts of the country--a tried-and-true strategy that had served John McCain quite well between 2000 and 2008.

Mike Huckabee is going for round two--no question. Everything he's done since 2008 has been geared towards a bigger, better effort in 2012. Fine--he wants to be President, but who is he?

BIOGRAPHY: The Huckabees history in Hope Arkansas goes back to the days when the area was first settled. Unfortunately, they did not become prominent citizens, and Mike Huckabee's parents struggled financially all of their lives. Michael Dale Huckabee was in fact the first male member of his family to graduate from High School. His family believed in Jesus and not sparing the rod. Huckabee married his highschool sweetheart, Janet McCain, when he was 18. He attended Ouachita Baptist University where he completed a bachelor's degree in religious studies in 2-1/2 years. He then enrolled in the Southwestern Baptist Theological seminary where he completed a single year of study.

In spite of his lack of academic credentials, Huckabee worked as a pastor for 12 years, and successfully campaigned for the presidency of Arkansas Baptist State Convention. During his pastoral career, he started two 24 hour television stations.

POLITICAL CAREER: Huckabee's political career began in 1992, the same year that Bill Clinton won the Presidency. He lost a contest against Dale Bumpers, but was successful in a special election for Lieutenant Governor. He won reelection handily, and set his sights on an open Senate seat. He wrapped up the nomination easily and was ahead in the polls when then Governor Jim Guy Tucker was convicted of arranging 3 million dollars in fraudulent loans as part of the Whitewater Scandal. Tucker resigned, and Huckabee dropped out of the Senate race to assume the governorship.

Huckabee was elected in his own right in 1998 and served two full terms. Combined with the two years he served to replace Jim Tucker, Huckabee was the third longest serving governor in Arkansas history, and easily the longest-serving Republican.

Huckabee ran for President in 2008 as the effective prototype of Sarah Palin--an unabashedly believing Christian, from a humble background, with unimpressive educational credentials, a traditional family, 'common' family problems (obesity, animal-torture), no links to American royalty and speaking a provincial dialect. Also like Governor Palin, Huckabee rose to elected office in the midst of scandal and corruption. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was widely believed to have had the inside track on the Vice-Presidential nod.

OPPOSITION RESEARCH: Mike Huckabee has elicited two kinds of opposition research--what's been instigated by his rivals and critics within the Republican party, and what the Democrats have on him.

Notably, like John McCain, Democrats have elected to withhold criticism of Huckabee in the hopes that they could 'choose' their opponent. One Democrat is reported to have said:

"He'll easily be their McGovern, an easy kill."

It would be justifiable to criticize this comment as unattributable, and thus suspect, but when one considers the similarities between Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee, its damn strange that Palin has to endure relentless mockery and calumny, while Mike Huckabee gets nary a mention by the left-wing media. Huckabee is a target-rich environment for the left, whose Christianity alone is enough to disqualify him from public office, in their eyes. Huckabee is a self-admitted creationist of the most extreme sort--the earth is only a few thousand years old, etc... Sarah Palin elicited a symphony of eye-rolls just for a much milder and more generally-held opinion that she does not accept all aspects of evolutionary theory.

Republican criticisms center around Mike Huckabee's statements and governing policies that are indistinguishable from those of a generic southern Democrat. Arkansas's average tax burden went up to 47% under his administration. He has endorsed Cap and Trade legislation, supports climate change legislation and has demonstrated anti-libertarian instincts in his 'preaching' about obesity and health-eating.

More recently, his lax policies on law and order issues were brought to a head by the murder of four police officers by Maurice Clemmons, who was granted clemency by Governor Huckabee.

In spite of the fact that he's been through a nomination process, Mike Huckabee has not been intensively vetted--certainly not to the extent that John McCain or Mitt Romney were. That may be because he never managed to become a serious threat to win the nomination after Iowa.

Huckabee's political persona bears commenting. His experience as a pastor is an extraordinarily useful skill set in that pastors entertain even as they push a proposition. His phrasing and cadence and musical skills make him an engaging presence in small groups. Yet there is the other side of the coin to consider. Huckabee tends to characterize his rivals, critics and opponents in harsh terms. A distinct mean-spiritedness comes through when anyone gets in the way of his considerable ambition. His long-standing grudge against Romney has been replaced with a new grudge against Sarah Palin, who blocks his path to the Presidency much in the same way Romney did.

'Going negative' is a universally employed tool of politics, but most politicians consciously elect to have other people do the dirty work, allowing them to appear principled and above the fray. Huckabee does his own knife-work, using passive-aggressive injections of criticism to knock his opponents off-balance.

We currently have a thin-skinned President, but Mike Huckabee is on a whole different level.

CONCLUSION: Mike Huckabee is the personification of some of the Republicans worst fears about making common cause with Evangelicals. The late Robert Novak mused:

The rise of evangelical Christians as the force that blasted the GOP out of minority status during the past generation always contained an inherent danger: What if these new Republican acolytes supported not merely a conventional conservative but one of their own?

Novak wrote that in 2007, when Evangelical disaffection for George W. Bush had peaked. The war was not an issue for social conservatives the way it was for the Left, so Bush's failure to deliver the goods (anyone remember the faith-based initiative? Bush's version of Obama's pay-offs to Unions...) created a sense of betrayal which Mike Huckabee exploited by being literally 'holier-than-thou'. Can Huckabee reproduce that in 2012? I have severe doubts about that possibility. Evangelicals gotta eat too, and the economy is an overriding issue that trumps everything else. If Evangelicals are voting on pocketbook issues over teaching creationism in the schools, Huckabee literally has no where to go.

Even discounting the blue moon of Evangelical discontent, Huckabee is going to have contend with a competitor in the form of Sarah Palin. She has every bit authentic social conservative as he is, but with cross-over appeal into the libertarian wing of the party. Not to mention what Huckabee himself has remarked (with intent to disparage)--she is way better looking than he is.

Huckabee has gone to great lengths to characterize himself as a Reagan conservative, which contrasts strongly with his actual record. Nevertheless, he would almost certain have 'help' from the mainstream media to obscure this inconvenient truth. That kind of help in 2008 meant a lot of Republicans voted for John McCain, believing he was against amnesty for illegal aliens. On the other hand, the media has taken as big, or a bigger hit than the Democrats. The creation of the Tea Party is as much a creation of a communication network as it is a political movement. A friendly media make not be the asset in free publicity and good will that it was in 2008.

Huckabee's record is a problem for him, but from my observation, the record weighs less on the scale of public opinion that current public perception and policy pronouncements. Unfortunately, but claiming to be a Reagan conservative, Huckabee invites examination of his record, and creates more of a problem than he solves. Moreover, the Maurice Clemmons incident is not some academic discussion about budget issues, nor is it ancient history. Releasing a murderer to murder again is one of those simple, easy to understand issues that hangs around a politician's neck like an albatross. One could argue that it hasn't hurt his polls at this point, but its fair to say that no one is really paying attention. The Clemmons issue will be a hammer to hit Huckabee on the head with during the primaries--and it will hurt.

Huckabee is also not strong in the debate format. That may or may not matter. John McCain embarrassed himself in the debates, but the vast majority of primary voters either didn't watch the debates or didn't care--he won anyways. There is reason to believe that this will change for 2012. In 2008, most people didn't really think a Republican could win the Presidency--the political climate was that bad for Republicans. As a result, the debates were simply not that interesting to primary voters. That expectation will be reversed in 2012 if the current climate persists. The primary debates will take on the de facto importance of the Presidential debates, and performance will matter.

If you can imagine Huckabee winning the nomination, how would he do during the general election? I believe the comparisons to McGovern are apt--its hard to imagine a weaker opponent for a generic Democrat. The hostility towards the kind of fundamentalist Christianity that Mike Huckabee represents will be extreme from the far left to large swaths of the libertarian center. Huckabee would have already split the right, leaving the election easy pickings--for someone else.

Am I being to hard on Mike? I don't think so. Huckabee managed to win elective office in Arkansas because he was running against crooks. It was right-place-right-time rather than demonstration of any particular strength as a candidate. Reelection as an incumbent is also no real test of a candidate--if you don't screw up too badly, its usually a forgone conclusion. During the nomination process and the actual general election, a candidate has to stand on their strengths, rather than on the opponent's weaknesses.

Once again, setting aside all the obstacles, how does Mike Huckabee govern the country in its current set of crises?

I frankly have no idea. Governing a small state like Arkansas is about as much preparation for being President as running a hot dog stand is for being President of Citicorp. There is nothing in his background to suggest that he has any insights into the complexities of the national economy, trade issues or foreign policy. What he has are instincts, and those instincts can't help but be informed by a life-time of fundamentalist Christian traditions--Huckabee has said as much himself.

I can't litigate the question of whether the country can be governed by biblical revelation or not. Its one of those issues that people take a hard and fast positions on and are not really open to further discussion. But in recognizing that reality, we must also recognize how unbelievably polarizing that prospect is. Huckabee's faith is different from say, George W. Bush, who revealed that he prayed for guidance. That suggested something along the lines of Abraham's Lincoln's famous utterance--pray like everything depends on God, work like everything depends on you. Bush didn't substitute biblical exegesis for his personal judgment. He prayed that his judgment would be adequate to the task.

I am distinctly uncomfortable with the prospect that a President Huckabee would base middle-eastern foreign policy on biblical precepts.

Barack Obama answered the charge that he lacked experience, but suggesting that while true, he had excellent judgment (not so much...). I think its possible to concede to Huckabee the political experience of working with a legislature and across the aisle, but as I stated in the article about Jeb Bush; the challenges confronting the country at the moment requires a President with policy experience. I believe that for the country to exit the current economic and foreign policy crises, we will need a President who can wrestle with entirely new approaches and distinguish between a viable strategy and a half-baked idea. He (or she) will have to understand this country, its people and its institutions in a profound way and then be able to rally it to correct action.

Mike Huckabee certainly wants to be President, but the country needs a very different kind of leader.

MARK ADDS: He didn't govern as a fiscal conservative, so he's not a conservative.

DAVE's ADDITION: How will Huckabee govern? I agree with Mick's assessment "I have no idea" and add - but it won't be as a conservative. As Mick and Mark both point out, his actions speak louder than his conservative claims. Conservatives don't advocate using schools to take mandatory body mass index measurements of children, as he did. How does that square with his evangelical supporters who probably have a higher propensity then other groups to take their kids out of school for just those reasons?

One other comment - Huckabee's evangelicism. This isn't just a backdrop for Huckabee. He has wrapped himself in it. I'm a deeply religious person - a strong believer in God. Typically I take reasurance in knowing other people, especially government leaders, have a sincere reliance in God - regardless of their faith and whether I agree with their political views. But dang if "there is something in his demeanor" as Ed Cropper notes below that doesn't ring true with Huckabee. It could just stem from the fact that I'm a mormon. Outside of disaffected mormons, the most ardent critcs of my religion are evangelicals. This is not to say that to be an evangelical is to be a critic of mormons - but Huckabee is. He used a theological difference between evangelicals and mormons to try to drive evangelicals away from Mitt Romney - despite the fact that on matters of conservatism there is a lot of common ground between mormons and evangelicals. Huckabee's actions smacked of insincerity and opportunism. Maybe the paster in him couldn't help himself, but I speculate he cannot articulate his positions in terms of conservative principles and values and instead must rely on theology to maintain the only base that will have him. They may be too enamored with one they think is their own to notice he is deficient in some core principles of conservatism they value.