Mike Huckabee is dancing around New York 23 and looks extremely silly. He won’t endorse in the race. It is very conspicuous.

I know, in fact, that he will not endorse because Club for Growth and Fred Thompson were there first and his ego couldn’t take it.

Sarah Huckabee dismissed the idea that Mike Huckabee had decided to stay out of the race because of any lingering tensions with Thompson or the Club for Growth, noting that he had thrown his early backing to Club for Growth favorite Marco Rubio in the hotly contested Florida GOP Senate primary.

“It’s absurd to say he doesn’t take sides,” Sarah Huckabee wrote in an e-mail. “He has taken a stand time after time for conservative issues. Sarah Huckabee dismissed the idea that Mike Huckabee had decided to stay out of the race because of any lingering tensions with Thompson or the Club for Growth, noting that he had thrown his early backing to Club for Growth favorite Marco Rubio in the hotly contested Florida GOP Senate primary.

“It’s absurd to say he doesn’t take sides,” Sarah Huckabee wrote in an e-mail. “He has taken a stand time after time for conservative issues. Where were all the conservatives when he was saying TARP was a bad idea?””

First, Club For Growth has not endorsed Marco Rubio, though I expect they’ll be bigger than Mike Huckabee and will endorse even though they weren’t first.

Second, the conservatives were saying the same thing on TARP by and large. It was, like in NY-23, the establishment that was pro-TARP and is now pro-Scozzafava.

Sitting on the sidelines in this race is not an option for Romney or Huckabee.

Neither is qualified as a leader of conservatives when they will not support Doug Hoffman. It is as simple as that. And we will remember in 2012.

I’ve known this for a couple of weeks and hoped it wasn’t true. But based on more conversations over the last few days and today, I have to report that denials to the contrary I know why Mike Huckabee will not endorse Doug Hoffman despite agreeing with pretty much everything Doug Hoffman says.

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The excitement this morning on Twitter seems all about Mike Huckabee. There has been no doubt in my mind that he never stopped running for President after conceding the nomination to John McCain last year. He just changed which Presidential election he was running in.

Which is why it was such a huge (but very silly, given the timing) argument late last year over who “came in second” in the primary race, and by proxy who the early 2012 “frontrunner” was going to be. Mitt Romney had a dedicated core of supporters fighting for him, and so did Huckabee. Some of them on each side just wouldn’t give up, while the rest of us just got back to work.

It appears that Mike Huckabee himself got back to work as well. Gone is the religious demagoguery from the campaign, as are the left-wing economic ideas he was pushing. Instead we have a man who’s fighting the embattled Barack Obama on his reckless spending and disastrous foreign policy, and the Democrats apparently are scared by it. In 2008 the Democrats loved him, but in 2009 they hate him. That in itself is a change that speaks well of Huckabee’s future hopes.

Republicans are creatures of habit. We tend to like seeing the same batches of people in one primary after another, and eventually the stable, persistent men get their shot. Even John McCain got his. But if Mike Huckabee wants to try for his, there is one more thing he needs to do: Help us take back the House.

As of a month ago, his PAC raised over $300,000. That money needs to get out to Repubican challengers nationwide, with less of a Southern bias than he now shows. Democrats took the House by challenging everywhere, and so will we. Reports are that Huckabee plans to back 50 candidates with his PAC. I hope he does, and I hope he funnels substantial amounts of money to each both through the PAC, and through direct (and free) fundraising stops.

If Mike Huckabee can be a rainmaker for Republicans who take back the House, then yes, Huckabee becomes a leading man in the Republican party and will be excellently positioned to run again in 2012. By proving he could raise money and be a genuine party leader, he will have earned it.

That is the missing piece for Mike Huckabee, and I truly hope he fits it into place.

According to the Votemaster, the recent decision by the Iowa Supreme Court striking down a state law which defines marriage as the legal union between one man and one woman, “immensely complicates” the 2012 race for the GOP…

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See this line?

That’d be one hell of an army of activists ready and willing to help in run for Senator from Arkansas next year.

Maybe he’ll do it. He should.