Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's two-step with the 2012 presidential is taking front-and-center stage. Huckabee's affable manner (plus a couple of year's of free advertising on Fox News) make Huckabee a real life contender for the GOP's brass ring….that is, if he decides to run.

 

The plugged-in scribes over at Human Events hear chatter that matches the noise that we have heard: Huckabee may well beg off the Presidential contest in favor of continuing his high paid (and  presumably more comfortable) gig as a member of the Fox News punditocracy.
 
The first hint Huck wasn't running was back in early March, when Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were suspended from Fox while they determined their Presidential intentions, and Huckabee wasn't. Then his top staffers from Iowa started getting hired by other campaigns. Now comes word he has told his former staffers from South Carolina they are free to find their fortunes elsewhere. 

All of this is being written off by Hogan Gidley, the Executive Director of HuckPAC, Huckabee's main political operation, as meaning nothing. Gidley pointed to polling showing Huckabee in a strong position nationally and said that no decision has been made as to whether Huckabee will run.

Check the back and forth in Human Events and decide for yourself. 
 
One way or the other, if Huckabee is truly serious about running, the rumors of his non-interest in the race are going to force him to make a decision sooner rather than later. The longer that he allows speculation to float out there, the more likely it is that he won't run, and is just Huckabee's perfectly rational and self-interested step of allowing speculation about his presidential ambitions generate publicity for his day job over at Fox News.