While some reports claim Sen. John McCain has decided on a running mate and that the person will be notified today, the McCain campaign is denying those reports this morning. But McCain's VP pick will reportedly join him for a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, and some reports claim McCain will formally announce his running mate at an Ohio campaign event Friday.

It's probably safe to make a couple of guesses regarding who it WON'T be. Despite continued speculation, Sen. Joe Lieberman is almost surely no longer in the running. With recent polling demonstrating that Lieberman would in fact hurt the GOP's chances in some very important states; with Karl Rove himself working to keep Lieberman off the ticket; and with conservative commentators like Robert Novak, Henry Olsen, and many other conservatives expressing open opposition to Lieberman as the VP nominee, the odds are stacked against McCain so alienating the GOP's base and ignoring polling and high-level advice. Not to mention that Lieberman himself thinks he'd be a bad pick, and even said so publicly several months ago.

Likewise, Tom Ridge's pro-abortion views would create similar problems for McCain with the GOP base. The fact that Ridge is scheduled to introduce McCain and the running mate at the Pennsylvania rally on Saturday is a good indication that Ridge won't be the VP pick. While some party officials claim Ridge would be acceptable to the pro-life base if McCain can convince them that Ridge would adhere to McCain's positions, the fact is that McCain himself has to do more to win over Christian conservatives in order to get them to the polls in November. With so much convincing and mobilization still left to do, McCain is not in any position to rely on convincing the base to

The remaining top contenders seem to be Mitt Romney (whose real record should immediately disqualify him), Tim Pawlenty, and one would think Mike Huckabee.  Yes, Huckabee's name has largely been dropped from most discussions, but any well-considered analysis should place Huckabee's name at the top of any short-list. He is, in fact, the most obviously beneficial choice.

Many conservatives are now realizing -- and regretting -- that Huckabee did not end up as the presidential nominee, such as Adam Graham at The Conservative Voice. Now, however, even some folks at previously anti-Huckabee conservative outlets like National Review are reconsidering a McCain-Huckabee ticket and finally realizing some of the obvious benefits that pairing would bring to the ticket.

I'd like to now explain my own views regarding why Mike Huckabee is the only potential VP candidate who very quickly solves or makes much easier two crucial problems for McCain's campaign.

First and most important, it mobilizes the base who otherwise will simply not be excited enough about the GOP ticket to not merely favor them and vote for them, but actively go door to door to turn out the vote and work hard to get this ticket elected. Sure, these voters are probably much more inclined to vote for the Republican ticket against Obama anyway, but that is not enough. If they don't act as the foot soldiers in key states, if McCain cannot count on them to actively work for his election, and if he cannot guarantee a large turnout from this key constituency, he will not win the election. And right now, he simply has not got their full trust or their full commitment to vote, organize, and turn out for him.

Mike Huckabee will not only bring these voters onto the campaign, he will energize them and rally them to do the grassroots work the campaign desperately needs in order to confront the formidable organization Obama has developed on the ground. The Christian base has demonstrated for the last 28 years that they are instrumental to Republican success at the polls, and when they fail to turn out in large numbers and do the grassroots work to elect conservatives, we see election results like 2006. That will happen again this November for the presidential and Congressional races, if the presidential ticket does not mobilize the right people at the right time. Now is the time for McCain to pick the one and only running mate capable of setting in motion the sort of mobilization it will take to win: Mike Huckabee.

Secondly, Mike Huckabee will also solve another key issue facing McCain's campaign: shoring up the South. Conservatives make a huge mistake if they underestimate the potential danger in the next ten weeks that faces us in Southern states. If we do not sweep the South, we will not win. Obama's campaign has the money and the ground campaign to force our party to expend a lot of resources in the South, lest we risk an upset in a few key states that would cost us the election. Mike Huckabee can and will solidify our dominance in the South, and no other candidate can do this. His appeal here is on several levels, beginning with the already mentioned ability to mobilize Christians and churches to confront Obama's organizing head-on. Add to this Huckabee's immediate strong appeal as a former governor from the South, and his personal roots in the poor and working class community. He speaks from personal experience, and can engage voters on economic and social issues because he understands them. The voters respond to him, they know he understands their concerns and their difficulties, and this is why Huckabee made such a strong showing during the primaries.

If McCain is largely freed of the need to expend excess resources in the South, every penny he saves there is a penny spent in swing states or to actually challenge Obama in typically "safe" Democrat states. And here, too, Huckabee has a strong role to play that nobody else but McCain himself could play. Huckabee, like McCain, can make a strong argument to the Hispanic voters, a group that has absurdly been ignored and marginalized by our party at a time when they are surging in relevance. If we concede the Hispanic vote to the Democrats now, they will solidify their hold on those voters and we won't just risk loosing this election, we will in fact guarantee a growing electoral tidal wave against our party in the years to come. NOW is the time to make a stand and fight for this up-and-coming block of voters, at least to win over enough of them to deny Democrats a huge coalition majority that includes overwhelming support from the Hispanic community.

McCain has some appeal to the Hispanic voters, but he has an opportunity to make more inroads and shrink the size of Democratic dominance in that voting block. Mike Huckabee would help strengthen this drive to win over a larger percentage of Hispanics, because perhaps no other Republican candidate has spoken more eloquently and forcefully to the issues concerning Hispanic voters while making his arguments in ways that in fact appeal to some of the most heartfelt core beliefs of the GOP Christian base. If that base can be won over to Huckabee's arguments concerning immigration policy, and if this in turn allows those voters to assist in Huckabee's outreach to Hispanic voters in states like Arizona, Nevada, and California, then the GOP has a chance to establish a base in a few Western states from which to work to build a larger Hispanic voting block for our party. Mike Huckabee should be McCain's "ambassador" to those voters, and any other candidate in fact works against this strategy and ultimately would instead ensure Democratic dominance of a growing Hispanic voting population that will soon play a deciding factor in elections for many years.

Mike Huckabee also brings strong credentials to the education issue, which is not appreciated as the important issue it could be in targeting key constituencies in certain states like Michigan. Huckabee would have a very strong argument, much stronger than the Democratic presidential ticket, regarding education reform and an unquestionable commitment to improvements and innovations in education policy. Members of teachers unions would be especially open to Huckabee's arguments, and that is no small thing in states that are currently facing big battles concerning public education and the teachers unions. These happen to be some of the same states where Huckabee's resonance with poor and working class economic issues also would have strong appeal, and that combination would further strengthen the grassroots work of his Christian supporters in such states, and it could solidify the GOP's hold on certain states while winning over a few of the swing states in this category.

There are a few assertions and lies about Huckabee that some of his detractors put forward, but those are easily refuted. The primary "negative" that other conservatives use against Huckabee is the tax issue, but that is in fact a non-issue. We should obviously consider Ronald Reagan's time as governor in California as a comparison, for example; we should consider Huckabee's platform regarding the Fair Tax during his presidential campaign; we should consider that McCain himself once opposed President Bush's tax cuts but now has vowed to make them permanent; and we should consider that there is a difference between Huckabee's views on how a governor must run his state compared to his views on the role of the federal government, ultimately the key factor for anyone serious about Federalism.

But really, perhaps the most important thing to consider is that our party's fate in November will not rise and fall on foot soldiers on tax policy doing grassroots, energized campaigning. It is simply the blunt truth that fiscal conservatives will largely support the GOP ticket because however much they might grouse about Huckabee's tax policies during the primaries, in the end they know the above points (Reagan's record, the Fair Tax, Federalism, etc) are true and they know the severe economic dangers that exist if Obama wins. Even with all of the complaints about President Bush's economic record in terms of government spending etc, in the end fiscal conservatives are some of the most dependable voters for our party because differences tend to be very small and nuanced, and they know ultimately what is economically best for this nation and vote accordingly. It is a matter of overall agreements and shared philosophy, a matter of practicality and finance.

This is why it happens to be very different from the issue of whether Christian conservative voters, for example, need to be mobilized. One cannot realistically compare the motivations of people organized around issues of spiritual faith and core moral beliefs (I will not vote for someone who is pro-abortion, for example, because it is a personal moral principle about which there can be no compromise), to people who have differences of opinion about the degree to which a particular tax policy should be tweaked or debates over how much deficit is too much etc. Fiscal conservatives do not believe that their Creator and Lord will judge them based on their commitment to a specific percentage drop in fiscal spending. Christian voters know that they can actively mobilize and oppose abortion and other issues regardless of the November vote, and that there is a long-term strategy they must adhere to or they will cease to be relevant anyway (so voting pro-abortion would be the same as not voting at all anyway, since they lose on their issue and they lose influence with the party). This is why I say that the facts about Huckabee's record on taxes, his commitment to different policies at the federal level, and the overall superiority of Republican economic policy should make it very clear that McCain should not view his VP selection as a way to shore up fiscal conservatives who still express any worry about his campaign, because it is simply a non-issue.

Mike Huckabee is the only rational choice for the VP nomination. I have faith that John McCain will make the right choice, and that he is aware that some choices -- Lieberman, Ridge, and Romney most obviously -- will cost him a significant portion of the GOP base, will add no real advantages to the ticket, and will thus cost him the election. Mike Huckabee will shores up the base, shores up the South and thus also saves resources to go on the offense in key Western states rather than on the defense in the South, he moves the GOP strongly in the direction of cutting into Democratic Party dominance of the Hispanic vote (adding to the ability to go on offense in the West), he speaks to working class and poor voters -- particularly in important Mid-Western states, and he has the ability to make targeted appeals to certain voters like teachers and mothers regarding education and health care in several important states as well.

If McCain does not pick Huckabee, then the GOP has signaled a sea change in terms of their commitment to Christian voters, and we will see a return to the domination of the party by moderate fiscal conservatives who have for years fought to wrestle control of the party back into their hands and to leave behind the policies that are most important to social conservatives and Christians. Our party must look to the future, and that means the future beyond November 2008. It will be a future without the support of social conservatives and Christians, with a tiny single-digit support among one of the fastest-growing voting blocks in the nation (Hispanic voters), and with a dwindling dominance in the South, if the party fails to nominate Mike Huckabee as Vice President.