John McCain Needs to Pick A Strong Conservative For Veep

First of all I'd like to congratulate Barack Obama. Last night, after winning Montana's primary, delegates in South Dakota's primary, and picking up a bunch of Super delegates he was able to clinch the title of "Presumptive Democratic Nominee." The Primary season is finally over! It took long enough!

Both candidates - John McCain & Barack Obama have big decisions to make. The biggest of which is who to select as their running mates. Since this is a conservative blog I am going to focus on John McCain's decision in this post and some others in the future. While not an easy choice to make it seems to me that Obama's is much easier to make and less crucil to the chances of his and his party's success. While the outrageously long primary fight with Senator Clinton has left the Democrats divided somewhat, the electorate at large seems much more open to them regardless.

Meanwhile John McCain's decision on running mate is extremely important - Not just for his chances, but the chances of his party in the General Election. The GOP is in shambles right now. 2006 was nothing less than a disastor. Unfortunately as of today 2008 looks to be much worse. The problem is a lack of excitement. In 2006 the problem for the GOP was turnout. Sure there were a few more Democratic voters that turned out in the Mid-Term elections of 2006 but the GOP's downfall was due to their base not being energized. A whole bunch of them decided to stay home and the pendulum swung to the left.

At this moment I have no faith that John McCain (on his own) can inject a lot of passion among the Conservative base to get them to turnout. In an election cycle where Change is a buzzword McCain represents the opposite, especially with his age. To make maters worse Obama and the other Dems are trying to paint his campaign as a referendum on a 3rd Bush term (which is a farce considering how many times that McCain has been at odds with the administration).

That spells doom for him. However the clouds really get stormy because if McCain can't get the base to the polls who will? That means more losses in the Senate and the House. According to electoral-vote.com The GOP is teetering on the brink of being completely dominated. If nothing changes one of the bigger side-stories will be if the Democrats can increase their Senatorial roster to 60. It is also possible for the GOP delegation in the House to fall below 200.

There fore turnout is very key and McCain needs someone who will inject passion into his ticket and persuade his base to get out and vote for him and other Republicans on the ballot. There are only two republicans that have been able to inspire a lot of passion in the past year during their campaigns. They both play to the same base and had the same base of passionate grassroots support. Those two Republicans are Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal and former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee. Both of them were able to inspire very passionate support from their volunteers. Both are dynamic speakers who are definitely bright stars in a party that is in disarray. Both of them would be a great choice for John McCain and fit well. However one of them fits better than th other for several reasons. I believe it is Mike Huckabee. Please don't bash me. I will explain later. I have some domestic duties to accomplish.