Signs mount that Huckabee won't enter 2012 race

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee talks about his new book, 'A Simple Government: Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (and a Trillion that We Don't!),' at the National Press Club, February 24, 2011 in Washington, DC.

/ Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Updated 2:55 p.m. Eastern Time

Mike Huckabee is running out of time to make up his mind on a 2012 presidential campaign - and the evidence is mounting that he will ultimately forgo another run at the White House.

The former Arkansas governor would enter the race as a formidable contender: Gallup found this week that he is the potential presidential candidate about whom Republicans feel most positively. And a Gallup poll last month found that Huckabee is one of just three Republicans - the other two are Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin - who have double-digit support from GOP primary voters.

One might think that Huckabee, who says he will announce a decision over the summer, would look at these numbers and conclude that he should jump headfirst into the race. But while he's openly discussing a possible run, he's sending decidedly mixed signals.

In this Feb. 24, 2011 file photo, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee shakes hands after speaking about his new book at the National Press Club.

/ AP Photo/Alex Brandon

For starters: While Romney, Tim Pawlenty and other likely candidates snap up key staffers ahead of announcing their runs, Huckabee has stayed on the sidelines even as his former staffers sign on with other candidates. Chip Salzman, Huckabee's campaign manager in 2008, is now chief of staff for freshman Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), though he says he could jump ship for a Huckabee run. Cliff Hurst, Huckabee's New Hampshire co-chair, has signed on with Pawlenty; so did one of Huckabee's top operatives in Iowa in 2008, Eric Wollson. Prominent New Hampshire Republican Ruth Griffin, a high-profile Huckabee supporter in the last cycle, has come out publicly for Romney.

A New Hampshire Republican tells CBS News that "no one has heard" from Huckabee in the key early voting state. While Pawlenty, Romney, Newt Gingrich and even Rudy Giuliani are making trips to the state ahead of a potential run, Huckabee has been conspicuously absent.

And then there's the fact that Huckabee is building a $3 million beach house in Santa Rosa Beach in Florida and has registered to vote there. The decision to move his residence there - away from Arkansas income taxes - fueled speculation that Huckabee is happy with his media gigs and the money they bring. (He also may need to keep that money coming in to pay the mortgage, which the Arkansas Times says totaled $2.8 million.) He makes $500,000 per year from his gig hosting a show on Fox News and also generates earnings from his radio show and book sales; he has acknowledged that "if I run, I walk away from a pretty good income."

When Fox announced two weeks ago that it was suspending contributors Gingrich and Rick Santorum because of their likely presidential runs, the network declined to suspend Huckabee, with Fox News executive Dianne Brandi pointedly noting that Huckabee is on a book tour and adding, "his present intention is to sell books." (At left, CBS News' John Dickerson's interview with Huckabee from February.)

A book tour, of course, can double as a mini-campaign, though it's somewhat hard to know what to make of Huckabee's itinerary for his book, "A Simple Government." He has multiple stops in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation voting state that he won in 2008, catapulting him to national prominence. But he is also stopping in plenty of states that won't matter in the 2012 campaign - Tennessee, Georgia, Kansas, Texas - and, so far, skipping New Hampshire altogether.

One southern Republican source told CBS News that he can't get a good read on Huckabee's intentions. The source said that while Huckabee's travel and public comments would seem to suggest he is running, people close to him don't believe he will ultimately decide to do so.

"He's going to have to make a decision soon," Ryan Rhodes of the Iowa Tea Party said in an interview. Rhodes, who noted that some of Huckabee's top Iowa talent had already signed on with potential rivals, said he too wasn't sure whether Huckabee would ultimately enter the race.

Former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, Mike Huckabee delivers the sermon at First Wesleyan Church Sunday morning March 6, 2011 in High Point, N.C.

/ AP Photo/News & Record, Lynn Hey

Huckabee is so well-known at this point that he can move slowly with a presidential rollout - for one thing, he doesn't need to make himself better known to key Republicans, as Pawlenty has been working to do for more than a year. But as CBS News political consultant John Dickerson points out, there are limits to that luxury.

"He's very close to the point where his delay places him in a tight spot if he does run," he said. "He doesn't have the money and he doesn't like raising it. The GOP nominee will need to be able to raise a lot of money to run against Obama's $1 billion. Lack of aptitude on this score will matter."

Dickerson also noted that Huckabee's recent controversial comments - he erroneously suggested President Obama grew up in Kenya and suggested the president's worldview had been shaped by growing up around madrassas - point to the need for the very sort of staff he has pointedly not put together.

"It's fine to have quips be a part of your charm, but if you're going to run and be folksy then you need to have staff to help clean things up," said Dickerson. "He is not putting together a staff. His staffers are going to other campaigns, which means even if he did start there would be no one left to build an organization."

"One of the questions about Huckabee from the non-evangelical wing is whether he's ready for prime time in a dangerous world," he added. "Even if he were to run his late-assembled staff and seeming ambivalence about a run would offer a backdrop so that people would be ready to interpret his first gaffe or the inevitable stumbles once he became an actual candidate and write him off as just not rigorous enough to be president."

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee speaks at the 'Values Voter Summit' September 17, 2010 in Washington, DC.

/ Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Huckabee's ground-level appeal is obvious: He is perhaps the only Republican in the country who squares unflinching social conservatism with a public persona so amiable that even his ideological opponents can't help but like him. If he runs, he has a good shot at becoming the consensus candidate for social conservatives, who are still a major force in the Republican Party even as it has shifted to a focus on fiscal issues.

But Huckabee has a good thing going, and he knows that Mr. Obama will not be easy to knock off next year; it's easy to imagine him concluding that he should stay put, enjoy making money and being a go-to conservative voice, and possibly take another look at a run in 2016. He knows that his star may well still be shining brightly four years from now, thanks to his high-profile media perch, which means that sitting out this cycle won't necessarily mean giving up on becoming president.

And frankly, he simply doesn't sound all that much like he wants to put himself through a campaign, even if he enjoys the speculation around whether he will run. He complained of the "harsh realities" of the cost of a campaign in an interview with the Associated Press earlier this month, and his lack of discipline in his public comments - asked about an Afghanistan endgame last month, he said, "I don't know. I don't think any of us know exactly" - suggest he isn't terribly worried about staying on message. 

That doesn't mean Huckabee isn't still leaving the door wide open for a run.

"It's no secret that Governor Huckabee is seriously considering a run for President in 2012 - and various national poll results are, quite frankly, becoming hard for the Governor and his political team to ignore," Hogan Gidley, the executive director of HuckPAC, Huckabee's political action committee, told CBS News.

Gidley added that "Mike Huckabee is for real - and he has the wide breadth of organized national support needed to win the Party's nomination for President and defeat Barack Obama."

That statement notwithstanding, Huckabee's comments and actions in recent months suggest that he may slowly be coming to the realization that he's better off sitting out this cycle. If he does forgo a run, social conservatives in Iowa -- and across the country -- will find themselves searching for another candidate they can rally around.

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[euge005]

Of course he will not run. He can make money spreading his small minded bigotry and racism in his job at Fox. That would be out if he ran & would need to buy that air time. And only the worst people in this country would vote for the loser.

[mary-miami]

Huckabee, Palin, Romney, Bachmann, Gingrich...extremists of the rightwing TeaParty who want to dismantle our constitution and destroy our rights. The GOP is bad enough but the Tea group doesn't believe in the basic freedoms guaranteed by our First Amendment. Free speech, press, religion, the right to assemble peacefully, protest and petition. The fact that anybody can express their opinion in this country is due to the First Amendment (free speech) and the fact that you know what is going on in the world and who said what, is due to the First Amendment (free press). If it were up to the rightwing, it would be a cookie cutter society where nobody had a right to have choices and think freely.
The only party that has ever respected individual rights and equal opportunity for everyone is the Democrats. The Democratic party is the one that represents and defends the rights of the working class. Republicans and TeaParty represent the rich.

[Nmmrng]

The crown clown is already in the White House.

[formrusmcsgt]

Doesn't say much at all for MaCain does it?

[Nmmrng]

It says the clown got the crown.

[Reality_Chex]

When are we going to begin to elect politicians that don't suffer from religious delusions and who can soundly run government?

[formrusmcsgt]

When the majority of the electorate isn't comprised of dogma drones.

Australia elected an atheist Prime Minister.

Never happen here......

[ANDROLOMA]

Any other qualified entrants into this "Rove's Gallery" of candidates?

[JayAdlerMusic]

A Presidential candidate cannot in 2011-2 get up on the stump and formulate nothing but speculation and promises. The American people heard much rhetoric in 2008 from both camps and they are much more savvy now. There are advantages and disadvantages in being a sitting president running for re election. It is true that judging from the past his status gives Obama an advantage. But this will be the election where hard results count more.There is still some time left before we go to the polls and decide.

[san850]

What we will hear from the GOP on the stump in 2012 is how their candidates all want to replace our Democracy with a Theocracy. Everyone on their list of potential candidates is a pseudo-bible-thumping Christian who thinks religion should rule this country. We cannot let that happen....our founding fathers knew what they were doing with separation of church and state.

[JayAdlerMusic]

From what I have read, Mike Huckabee has not actually acquired the funding necessary to run which may mean he is going to go beach house and celebrity. I would do that without thinking. There is a line in this article which I am puzzled by. Something to the effect that it is going to be hard to beat Obama in 2012.Was it hard for Bill Clinton to beat George HW Bush? Mr. Bush had the best bio of any President in history. He jumped out of a plane in WW11. If you remember that election Clinton had some things going on during the campaign. If Obama in 2012 has no results to stand on, the generic GOP candidate will win easily.

[san850]

I think there are enough intelligent and free-thinking voters to keep a GOP Theocrat as far away from the presidency as they can, and rightfully so. That's all the GOP has offered up at this point.

[IL-Independent]

USA, I think you meant to say that it would put all politicians at the front of the line. Every politician from both parties have lied, cheated and the rest. So again when you say things that applies to both parties, make sure you include both parties, otherwise your point is mute

[JV1970]

USA__Is-back Show me where I've EVER said that Palin is a good Christian! Show me! I dare you! All I've ever said is that she is a Christian! I've never called her good or bad! I simply said she's a Christian!

[glenp827]

HUCKSTERBY is a RINO SELLOUT worthless piece of garbage you know he's crap since the MSM loves the clown

[WeHappyFew]

Don't hold back, now. Please share how you really feel................

[euge005]

His brand of politics polluted by small time, small mindede religion is nearly as dangerous as the Taliban's. It might be ok in the pulpit of a backwards area where there are only poor white baptists and none of THEM. You know "them", the catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddists and blacks. He has to protect his flok and the values he assigns them from the scary others. But the term RINO is the one his kind use to lable Repugs who are not waht he sells. It should not be applied to the wingnuts that stafrted the term. However, I defenately agree on the sell out part. That goes hand in hand with the GOP dominated b y big money. He will not run because he cannot get his pudgey little hands on any of it.

[nanc12]

I love the new poll that says WI gov Scottie Walker is the new "rising star" of the repub party for 2012. LOL - someone who couldn't finish college is a rising star. Doesn't take much, does it? Just a hatred for the middle class.

[jimatmadison]

Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich.....

Having a firm grip on reality is NOT a requirement for being a rising star in the GOP.

As a matter of fact, having a grip on reality is a definite handicap in the GOP.

[Nmmrng]

Here are some more people that never finished college or even went. Certainly wouldn't want another Lincoln, now would we.

George Washington (The death of his father ended Washington's formal schooling; however, he believed strongly in formal education. In his will, he left money and/or stocks to support three educational institutions.[1])
Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
William Henry Harrison (attended college but never received a degree)
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Abraham Lincoln (had only about a year of formal schooling of any kind)
Andrew Johnson
Grover Cleveland
Harry S. Truman (went to law school but did not receive a degree)