He’s one of the most well-liked and well-known national figures in the Republican Party. His name is Mike Huckabee. And make no mistake, he’s running for president in 2016.

As someone that championed his candidacy back when I was just a local host during the 2008 Iowa Caucuses, and has kept in contact with him since then (I carry an endorsement from Huckabee on my website), I am both excited and concerned about the prospect of him running again.

I’m excited about Huckabee as a potential standard-bearer because:

1) His likeability potential is sky-high, and if you think that doesn’t matter you haven’t been paying attention to American presidential elections since the first televised debate between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960.

2) He's a populist Republican who can't be branded a corporate elitist. He's not a "47%" kind of guy. The reality is social issues usually don’t doom the GOP in national elections. No Republican has ever lost the presidency for being too pro-life, but several have lost when they’ve been perceived to be shills for crony capitalists.

There are three primary factions in today’s national Republican Party—the establishment, the social conservatives, and the Tea Party. A non-establishment candidate needs to win enough support of social conservatives and Tea Partiers to win the nomination. Right now Huckabee has more skeptics than supporters in the Tea Party tribe. He can’t win the nomination unless he woos at least some of them.