A reported that Huckabee had been approached recently, he said he was unlikely to enter the race.
"I don't see it happening," Huckabee told Fox News, unless he said, someone presented him with 50 million dollars up front. "I don't see the pathway financially and organizationally, you know, to get there."
But the conservative Huckabee, who appeals to evangelical Christians and is seen as an effective campaigner, had been weighing the idea, according to two sources who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity.
"He is entertaining the request for conversations about it," one of the sources close to Huckabee said. "I do not think it is a complete 100 percent 'I'm reconsidering' but he hasn't shut the door on it."
Huckabee made a splash by winning the Iowa caucuses as a candidate in 2008 but later faded.
A second source said Huckabee was urged to enter the 2012 race after recent stumbles by Texas Governor Rick Perry, who appeals to a similar right wing of the Republican party.
"I spoke to him directly," this person said. "He is a political student and he understands the race is still there to be won."
"I do know there are concerted efforts to get him in," said a third source, a former Huckabee advisor. "As of this time, the governor has not told anyone he is entering."
A top official for HuckPAC, a Huckabee fundraising group, said there is no truth to the notion that he would jump in.
"The governor is still content with his decision to stay out of the race," the official said.
Perry, now the frontrunner in the Republican race in national polls, has lost some momentum since a lackluster debate performance last week and dismay by potential backers to his moderate stance on immigration.
Huckabee is a former Baptist minister who takes solid right positions on matters important to the Republican base -- including abortion and gay marriage.
That would put him in competition for fans of Perry and Representative Michele Bachmann, whose support has dwindled in the past month.
But despite strong support likely in early voting state Iowa, the hurdles for Huckabee would be steep, with more states squeezing primaries into a shorter timeframe requiring more cash earlier, said Tim Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa.
Practically speaking, I'm not sure how Mike Huckabee's return to the race could work. His biggest success in presidential politics was winning the Iowa caucus in 2008. Iowa is his most favorable territory, but because he never entered the 2012 race, that space has since been carved up by a host of other candidates, most notably Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, who tend to appeal to the same crowd.
He'd also have to get a a fundraising effort and a campaign organization up and running again very quickly, and unless Ed Rollins -- who had hoped to rep Huck in the 2012 bid but ended up running Bachmann's campaign until very recently -- suddenly recovers from the health issues that he says were the reason he quit Bachmann, Huckabee just doesn't have a whole lot of hope at making a legit run for the White House.
RedState's Erick Erickson tweets, "This Reuters report comes as news to the Huck folks it seems. Just got off the phone with one of them," and HuckPAC has told The Hill that there's no truth to this. So I'd say do not lose sleep over the possibility of Huckabee entering the race. Instead, you should wonder why no one seems to care enough about Haley Barbour to start some fun rumors about him.
4:11 pm: Huckabee himself just appeared on Neil Cavuto's show on Fox News to shoot this rumor dead: "I do not see a path for me, either financially or organizationally." He stressed that the fundamentals favored candidates who got in early and stayed faithful to the task of running for President.
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