In 2008, Mike Huckabee...

...surprised almost everyone by winning the Iowa Caucuses. (And, yes, that's Chuck Norris behind him -- he's a big supporter.) In fact, the former governor of Arkansas got more votes in Iowa than any Republican ever, before or since. But despite winning a number of other primaries that year, Huck had trouble raising money and eventually dropped out of the race.

Recently, Huckabee announced he was leaving Fox News to consider a run for the 2016 GOP nomination. Huck will most likely be joining a crowded field and several observers think he has a good chance to take Iowa again and be a factor in the race.

But I can't help wondering if maybe -- just maybe -- Huckabee missed his best chance in 2012. Remember that year? Many Republicans were looking for anyone other than Mitt Romney to be the nominee. And according to John Heilemann of Bloomberg, the Obama campaign feared Huck more than any other Republican, including Romney.

In 2008, Huck had that "new car smell" that just might not be there this time around. Will all those Iowans who voted for him last time want to "waste" their ballots on a guy who can't raise money and go the distance? Or will they give one of the newcomers a chance, such as Rand Paul, Ted Cruz or even Ben Carson?

Last week I asked if Chris Christie missed his "sell by" date. Did Mike Huckabee miss his?

Here we go...

...everyone! Yesterday Jeb Bush, when asked about same-sex marriage, said (my emphasis):

"We live in a democracy, and regardless of our disagreements, we have to respect the rule of law. I hope that we can show respect for the good people on all sides of the gay and lesbian marriage issue – including couples making lifetime commitments to each other who are seeking greater legal protections and those of us who believe marriage is a sacrament and want to safeguard religious liberty."

Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, recently wrote on his website:

It is shocking that many elected officials, attorneys, and judges think that a court ruling is the 'final word.' It most certainly is not.

It is NOT the 'law of the land' as is often heralded. The courts can't make law. They can interpret it and even rule that a law is unconstitutional, but they have no power to create it or enforce it.

Looks like this could be Issue No. 1 between the two Republican contenders. Let the jousting begin!

The New Yorker cartoon of the day:

“No need to come to order. The Honorable Justice Perkins is just tenderizing his porterhouse.”

A front-page story...

...in the Times this morning, "Home Schooling: More Pupils, Less Regulation," makes me wonder if the conventional wisdom on the 2016 Republican presidential race is all wrong.

Huh? What? And why do I have a picture of Mike Huckabee and Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus at the top of this post?

First, from the article on home schooling (all emphasis mine): 

Unlike so much of education in this country, teaching at home is broadly unregulated. Along with steady growth in home schooling has come a spirited debate and lobbying war over how much oversight such education requires.

Eleven states do not require families to register with any school district or state agency that they are teaching their children at home, according to the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, a nonprofit group that is pushing for more accountability in home schooling. Fourteen states do not specify any subjects that families must teach, and only nine states require that parents have at least a high school diploma or equivalent in order to teach their children. In half the states, children who are taught at home never have to take a standardized test or be subject to any sort of formal outside assessment.

And the movement is growing. Once mainly concentrated among religious families as well as parents who wanted to release their children from the strictures of traditional classrooms, home schooling is now attracting parents who want to escape the testing and curriculums that have come along with the Common Core, new academic standards that have been adopted by more than 40 states.

(By the way, watch out for that term, "Common Core." It's going to be a big topic in the Republican primaries.)

Okay, so where does Mike Huckabee fit into all this? From an article way back in 2007, "Huckabee Draws Support of Home-School Families":

White, evangelical Christians make up about 38 percent of the Republican electorate in Iowa. Among voters in that group, Mr. Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister and the former governor of Arkansas, leads his closest competitor, Mitt Romney, by two to one, according to a poll released this month by the Pew Research Center.

While there are no official statistics on how many of Mr. Huckabee’s evangelical supporters are home-school proponents like the Hurleys, people in the movement nationally believe his support from that group is broad in Iowa and, more important, that the strength of that support is deep.

“Mike is the kind of candidate we have hoped for,” said Michael Farris, an evangelical Christian and chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, a group that defends parents’ rights to educate their children at home. “He’s a man who shares a world view with evangelical Christians.”

Huck, you may recall, won the Iowa caucuses that year. And, as I noted the other day, the former governor of Arkansas looks like he's going to make another run in 2016.

Now, about that conventional wisdom. First of all, what is it? That the 2016 GOP race will come down to a "playoff" between the establishment (or mainstream conservative) candidate and the tea party (or movement conservative) candidate.

In November, I considered the possibility of a three-way race for the nomination, between Huck, Jeb Bush and Rand Paul. But now I'm starting to think even that may have been too conservative. If Huck does indeed jump in, with his support from home-schoolers, evangelicals and homophobes (and others), he may end up occupying just a small niche in the party. With Jeb, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio (and maybe Scott Walker and John Kasich) vying for the establishment vote (and Mitt Romney waiting in the wings for a draft?), and Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry (and Ben Carson?) bringing their individual slices, this thing could get real Balkanized, real fast. Suddenly, you could see five or six candidates with support in the 15 or so percent range with no one able to deliver a knock-out blow. (Could we possibly see a brokered convention? That's not supposed to happen in modern times.)

But with a shortened and streamlined calendar this time around, we may have every bit as much chaos as in Reince Priebus's worst nightmare.

Remember that data breach...

...at Target a while back? Well, it cost the CEO his job. From an article in Bloomberg last year (all emphasis mine):

The data breach was the last straw for Target Corp. (TGT) Chief Executive Officer Gregg Steinhafel.

After last year’s hacker attack compromised the personal data of millions of shoppers and added to the retail chain’s woes, the board replaced Steinhafel as chairman and CEO today, saying the time was right for new leadership. John Mulligan, Target’s chief financial officer, will serve as interim CEO while the company seeks a permanent chief, according to a statement. Board member Roxanne Austin, a former DirecTV executive, will be interim chairwoman.

Steinhafel, a 35-year Target employee, was already under scrutiny for lagging rivals in e-commerce and overseeing a Canadian expansion that lost almost $1 billion last year. The pressure mounted over the holiday season, when hackers overcame Target’s defenses and stole shoppers’ personal information.

“Failure isn’t one big mistake -- failure is lots of small mistakes that added up to a big mistake,” said Les Berglass, founder and CEO of Berglass & Associates, a New York-based executive-search firm.

Wow. Bummer. Well, I guess them's the breaks.

But then I saw this in Bloomberg today:

Gregg Steinhafel, who stepped down as chief executive officer of Target Corp. (TGT) in May following a massive credit-card data breach, received retirement plans worth more than $47 million. When he joined Target in 1979, the Minneapolis-based company offered generous retirement programs -- so generous for executives that it included a deferred compensation plan that paid a guaranteed 12 percent interest. 

That’s quite a contrast with the average Target employees’ retirement plans. Steinhafel’s total package is 1,044 times the average balance of $45,000 that workers have saved in the company’s 401(k) plan. 

The piece goes on to say:

The gap in the U.S. workplace between the highest and lowest paid has been growing for years. Far less noticed has been the growing gulf in retirement pay.

It's also accompanied by the picture above which shows Steinhafel joining "a team rally prior to the Black Friday store opening in Bloomington, Minn. on Nov. 22, 2012."

Now, I hate to go all Karl Marx on you here, but I wonder: Would all those employees be smiling like that if they knew how exploited they were? (And I can't think of a better word to use than that.)

Snow comes to Little Italy.

Don't look now, Jeb, but...

...Mike Huckabee may be entering the race for the 2016 Republican nomination -- and he's leading in Iowa.

According to an article in the New York Times:

TV host and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he is leaving his Fox News talk show as he considers whether to seek the Republican nomination for president, a decision he expects to reach in the spring.

And, in the latest from RealClearPolitics, Huck leads in three separate Iowa polls.

I keep asking: is this the "mainstream" vs. "movement" conservative showdown we've been waiting for?