Mike Huckabee’s announcement this past weekend that he was ending his run as host of a show on the Fox News Channel left little doubt that he was seriously considering running for president. The former Arkansas governor made a respectable try for the White House in 2008 earning an upset triumph in the Iowa caucus and had a reasonable argument for his claim that he, rather than Mitt Romney, was the runner-up to eventual winner John McCain. With a popular folksy manner and the loyalty of fellow evangelicals, Huckabee might be said to have as good a chance as any of the long list of potential contenders or at least to the title of leading conservative candidate. But such optimism about his chances fails to take into account the fact that 2016 isn’t 2008.

While few in the GOP establishment are taking him seriously, not everyone is dismissing Huckabee. In an interesting piece on Real Clear Politics, Scott Conroy argues that with Iowa coming first in January as it always does and a Super Southern Primary following early on in March 2016, the thinking in some quarters is that Huckabee can, at the very least, duplicate his early 2008 success if not make a serious run at the nomination. According to this argument, Huckabee’s best ally is the calendar that emphasizes states in which evangelicals play a larger role than in other states later in the campaign.

There’s something to be said for this reasoning, in that Huckabee hasn’t disappeared in the nearly seven years since his presidential campaign ended. By hosting a Fox News show for the last few years, he has managed to stay on the radar of conservatives. While not among the higher-rated cable shows, Huckabee has nevertheless burnished his reputation as a genial and intelligent speaker often as interested in human-interest stories as in political controversies. That continued popularity in some parts of the right has enabled him to maintain decent polling numbers that often place him above or even with more talked-about 2016 contenders such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or Rand Paul. It’s likely that with that profile he can raise enough money to be at least competitive in the early stages when the terrain is most favorable to his hopes.

But the notion that Huckabee can pick up where he left off in 2008 is still somewhat fanciful.

Let’s start with the fact that the field that Huckabee snuck up on to score an unexpected win in Iowa is nothing like the one he will face a year from now. Chief among those challengers for his particular niche of Republican voters is Rick Santorum who narrowly won Iowa in 2012 with the same formula of beating the bushes in every county of the state. But both of them will also be up against Ted Cruz who will have his own appeal to evangelicals as well as Tea Partiers and other conservatives. And that’s not even counting, among others, the second coming of Rick Perry and the possible candidacy of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker who may be able to bridge the gap between the party’s establishment and activist wings.

Just as important is that his opponents will see him coming this time. The fact that the conservative Club For Growth is already starting to attack him for what it claims is his big government pro-tax and spending record in Arkansas is damaging by itself. But it’s also a harbinger of the kind of opposition research that will raise his negatives in ways he never experienced in 2008.

Time has not stood still in the last eight years and Huckabee will find that the room he once had to himself in the party is not only crowded but filled with younger, hungrier candidates who are better prepared to fight for it out. Considering that his chances of actually winning the nomination are slim and those of his being elected in November even slimmer, his decision to abandon his TV perch seems like more a case of hubris than of sound planning. A year from now, as he seeks to get back into the media after what is likely to be an unsuccessful second try for the presidency, he may rue his decision to leave Fox for what seems like a rather unlikely scenario for success.