My friend Joe Carter, who had taken a leave of absence from his day job at the Family Research Council to work on the Huckabee campaign, has returned to the FRC and has posted his thoughts from the campaign trail on his blog, Evangelical Outpost.

An excerpt to wet your whistle:

Before I announced that I was going to work for the Huckabee campaign, the news broke on NRO's The Corner. I suppose it's fitting then that my departure was also told first on an online media source. While I was planning to announce my leaving closer to the day of the caucus, Jonathan Martin from Politico beat me to it. There has been a lot of speculation about what it portends, but the actual details are rather banal.

At the end of November Family Research Council generously gave me a 30-day leave of absence so that I could go to work for Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign. I thought working on the campaign would be an invaluable experience so I jumped at the opportunity, knowing full well that it was only a temporary measure. At the time Governor Huckabee was still behind in both the Iowa and national polls. The question "What if he has a chance to win it all?" was something I figured I'd have to deal with when the time came.

Now the time has come for me to return to my job and my long-suffering wife. I am extremely grateful to FRC and to my family for their generosity and patience. I'm also thankful to the entire staff at the Huckabee campaign headquarters for allowing me to be a part of the team. Hopefully, after Governor Huckabee wins several primaries (and opens an office closer to the DC area) I'll be able to help him once again in an official capacity.

In the meantime, I'll share some of what I learned on the campaign trail. Although I can't share any secret inside-the-campaign information there are a few lessons I learned during my 30-day adventure. None are particularly profound and some are quite obvious. Much of it may even be particular to the fact that I worked with such a small team. Still, I thought it might be worthwhile to share some of them in order to confirm what you might already suspect about Presidential politics.

Joe's post is, at times, brutally honest, candid, and a must-read. Do so.