Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP presidential nomination last year, spoke with reporters this morning at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Huckabee said he hasn’t yet focused on whether he’ll run in 2012. He’s got a gig on FOX and a new book out, the feel-good “A Simple Christmas,” which he insisted this morning has “no ulterior motive” behind it in terms of positioning him for a future run.

As for Tuesday night’s off-year gubernatorial and congressional elections, Huckabee said he was surprised both by the big margin of the Republican win in Virginia, and by the GOP’s successful takeover of the governorship in New Jersey despite an independent candidate threatening to be a spoiler.

As for the NY-23 congressional seat, which Democrats picked up after the Republican dropped out after several Republicans threw their support toward a third-party conservative candidate (Huckabee did not): “If people believe that the way to sort of get the attention of Washington is through third party candidacies, I hope they will rethink that because typically what a third-party candidacy does is ensure the election of the one you liked the least in the first place. I just hope that that will become more and more clear to the political participants because whether we like it or not we have a two-party system.”

As for potential 2012 rival Sarah Palin, who had supported the third-party candidate in the New York race, Huckabee was content to say little: “It’s her right, there were a number of Republicans who did. It apparently didn’t seem to have a big impact on the ultimate outcome.”

As for who he sees as a GOP frontrunner three years out from the next presidential election: “I don’t think there really is one and any of the polls right now are meaningless. . . it’s like speculating who’s going to be the best actor next year when we don’t even know what the movies are.”

On how his usually strenuous diet and exercise routine has been going: “I had a tough year, plantar fasciitis on my feet: that’s horrible. I’ve gotta drop about 25 pounds and get back to a distance running regime which I’m trying to do but – it’s been a real nightmare . . . horrible . . . it just comes on unexpectedly.” Huckabee said he has worn a splint at night and now has orthotics to help.”

On life post-campaign: “I’m a lot more relaxed these days. Life is good.”

On why he opposes cap-and-trade as Democrats conceive it: "If you manaufacture something in the United States under the Clean Air Act there are very rigid controls on the emissions that can come forth from any process. If through a harsh penalization on cap and trade those jobs move to China where there is no such Clean Air Act, you’ll actually end up putting more pollutants in the air than we are now."

On how TARP could hurt politicians who backed it: The precedent that it created, which now we’re seeing is that anytime a business or enterprise gets in trouble, they run to the government and say help uncle sugar you’ve got to bail me out and we fall over backwards doing it, except if you’re a small business and then you don’t exist. It’s a disaster.

On the GOP contest for Florida Senate: “I don’t think the fact that Marco Rubio is challenging Charlie Crist is anything but positive,” Huckabee said. “Charlie Crist went out with Barack Obama and said ‘give me all the stimulus money you want.’ To many of us, that was an anathema.”

“The fact that Marco Rubio is running for the Senate to me is a good thing. It shows we have a healthy party that can have more than one candidate. The fact that we had the national senatorial committee go out and endorse Crist early infuriates me. I thought that that was completely unacceptable, and it made me want to work even harder for Rubio. And it shows the disconnect between the establishment Republicans and their grass roots – the people who actually go out and pout up yard signs, knock on doors and make phone calls and work until 2 in the morning on cold pizza and hot Coke.”

-By Margaret Talev and Erika Bolstad