Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on Monday dismissed as "laughable" and "absurd" a story suggesting he would be driven to run for president over a longstanding feud with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney that dates back to the 2008 campaign.

Huckabee blasted the article published by Politico, which ran with the headline "Huckabee throws a Mitt fit" and advanced the theory that the antagonism between the 2008 rivals for the GOP nomination would leave Huckabee "especially tempted" to take another shot at bringing down Romney in 2012.

"I found that laughable," Huckabee said on a conference call with reporters. "My gosh, if a person's ever been even near a presidential campaign, you don't make decisions that pull you, your family, your friends, all of the supporters you've ever had and ever hope to have into the vortex of something like this over some personal issue. That's absurd. It's beyond absurd."

Huckabee is set to embark on another book tour this month to promote his latest tome, A Simple Government: Twelve Things We Really Need From Washington (And A Trillion That We Don't!). The winner of the 2008 GOP Iowa caucuses is scheduled to make six stops in the nation's first voting state and will also head to South Carolina-a state that would likely prove critical to him in the 2012 campaign-for five stops early next month.

"I'm trying to make a methodical and thoughtful decision," Huckabee said of his deliberations on running for president. "I wouldn't take Iowa for granted because one thing I know about the voters of Iowa [is] you don't take them for granted. In fact, most of them aren't going to tell you for sure that they're going to vote for you until the week before the caucuses."

As he continues to face questions about whether he can mount an effective campaign structure if he delays his decision until late summer, as he has said that he would, Huckabee noted that most Americans are not yet thinking about the 2012 campaign.

"The more months that you have that operation, the more expensive it is to operate it, and the more fatigued your team is, depending on how many months they have to go," Huckabee added.

Huckabee lavished praise on two of his potential rivals for the nomination, saying that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has been "terrific" in his current job and has skill sets that could be "tremendous" for a president.

Huckabee said that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour had the "smartest political mind in America today" and added that Barbour was a "sheer genius of political strategy."

Huckabee repeated his criticism of the media and presidential debate moderators for focusing too much on process-related questions at the expense of policy disagreements in 2008 but said that he "thoroughly enjoyed" being on the campaign trail.

"I loved the campaign," Huckabee said. "I enjoyed every moment that I was campaigning and talking to people on the trail. What I didn't enjoy was that so many of the issues were ignored."