“All the factors say go, but my heart says no and that’s the decision I have made,” Huckabee said at the end of his hour-long weekly television program on Fox News.
Huckabee spent a few minutes knocking down rumors that had flown about why he would or would not run for president. He said his wife and children had encouraged him to run. He said the polls had shown he could be a serious contender and that he could win voters outside the south and in addition to social conservatives. And despite his well-known aversion to asking for money, he said he had become convinced he could raise the necessary money.
Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, and his decision not to run again opens the door for other social conservatives. Perhaps no one will benefit more than Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) if she decides to run. She has the capability -- probably more than any other potential GOP candidate -- to unite social conservatives in Iowa in the manner Huckabee did last election.
But it is also likely -- even if Bachmann runs -- that the social conservative vote in Iowa will be more splintered in 2012 than it was in 2008, with votes going to former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), former Godfathers Pizza CEO Herman Cain, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. A divided vote could benefit other more moderate candidates like Pawlenty, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, if he decides to run, or former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, if he decides to campaign in the Hawkeye State.
