I forgot Huckabee while writing about the GOP field. And he is a strange case.

He is a strange case partly because, for all the talk about the Tea Party, Huckabee manages to lead the GOP field while being very much an anti-Tea Party candidate. He has not tried hard to kiss up to them and his record is not all in line with their ideals. Yet he is the most popular GOP candidate and has the highest favorables.

If Huckabee runs and wins, it would signal the decline of the Tea Party as the dominant force in Republican politics (which is already happening, as a number of new congresspersons and senators elected with Tea Party support are backing away from them now that they are in office; I’m talking to you Marco Rubio!).