Until he clinches the nomination John McCain’s campaign can’t formally discuss co-opting the Republican National Committee into his general election plan

Look for that to change tonight and the party takeover to begin immediately.

If McCain goes over the top the campaign will move as soon as tomorrow to refocus the RNC on McCain’s candidacy. There is no shortage of emphasis on, or rather against, the democrats - the GOP national party has mountains of opposition research at the ready. The BIGGER task is getting the RNC synched up with McCain.

Unifying conservatives and the GOP is different from taking over the administration of the party apparatus.

The McCain camp will want his people in key positions. The McCainiacs will want to tailor and manage the party message to fit and compliment the candidate’s style and substance.

That is step one. Its starts Wednesday, assuming McCain clinches Tuesday with Oh, TX, VT and RI.

Any talk of McCain making an early VP pick is wrong. While the senator and insiders are happy to discuss prospects and ruminate aloud, all that has been done is to have one aide research the selection process other candidates have used. Nothing more.

They have not even begun seriously considering who will head the search team. They have not begun compiling the long and short lists. They have not discussed who will run the vetting process.

They have months to think it through and will unveil the selection only at the most opportune time possible.

The running mate is a major ace in the hole for presidential candidates and they never want to play them too soon.

The March 4th primaries could put McCain over the top for the GOP nomination and Huckabee officially in second place for the 2008 GOP race.

These are HISTORIC achievements that to many seemed unimaginable last year. This VLOG and the FNC political unit however never once wrote off McCain last year when others did.

And while Huckabee went virtually unnoticed until last years Ames strawpoll, we identified him in January of 2007 as the darkhorse most likely to surprise.

Now McCain has 1014 delegates. He needs 177 to reach the needed 1191.

Huckabee has won 257 delegates. He needs 24 to best Mitt Romney who won 280.

McCain is expected to take VT and RI outright but neither Texas nor Ohio are winner take all - they are awarded proportionally by state senate and congressional district respectively. If Huckabee wins any combination of 8 Texas state senate or Ohio congressional districts he will win 24 delegates and thus go ahead of Romney. Undisputed 2nd place.

Huckabee will make no definitive statements Tuesday night about the future of his campaign. But look for news on Thursday when he returns to Little Rock. For weeks the Huckabee campaign has been doing an unofficial victory lap. The governor and his staff are delighted by his success and acknowledged status as a conservative leader who will now be well positioned to run again in the future.

Camp Huck is steering people away from veep speculation. The governor doesn’t expect an offer and insiders say if it came he should reject it. They think Huckabee’s future prospects are stronger making his own way rather than playing #2 to McCain.

McCain must first co-opt the RNC, and its a long complex process to take over the sprawling Bush admin national party apparatus. They are for now merely studying how past VP’s have been chosen and discussing how to come up with their own process.

Republicans all over the country are emailing and calling the campaign with their runningmate advice. While Huckabee would have us believe he is disinterested for now, that has never been the case for Mitt Romney.

Though Romney and McCain fought tooth and nail and grew legitimately angry with one another for exaggerated charges and counter charges throughout their year long battle, alot of republican grey beards think they make a good team on paper…..

Columbus, Ohio:

At his victory rally after handily winning Wisconsin, there was no confetti and little raucous music but McCain flanked the stage with young people following post Potomac Primary criticism of the image of him surrounded by old members of the party establishment.

In his victory speech he attacked Obama HARD.

See our own Embed producer, Mosheh Oinounou’s write-up on the predicted win.

click here:

After the sweep by Obama and McCain in the Potomac Primaries the latest delegate count by Real Clear Politics shows McCain has about 3/4 of the needed delegates and Huckabee has less than one quarter.

The actual delegate count is completely vague. Each campaign on both sides counts delegates differently. The AP and various networks have differing numbers too. On the democratic side, it is clear that Obama has the lead but by how much is the subject of debate and super delegates which are available only for the democratic contest are another story entirely.

At the conclusion of his victory remarks in Alexandria, Va tonight John McCain used Barack Obama’s famous line “fired up and ready to go!” This after McCain on the Senate floor today made a show of crossing the aisle into democratic territory to shake hands, back-slap, and trade campaign trail stories with Obama!

The two mention one another almost daily now. Obama, in his victory remarks from Madison Wisconsin tonight, praised McCain’s military service even as he bashed McCain’s policies as out of date and out of touch. McCain writes off Obama and Clinton, et al, as defeatocrats.

There were a few nervous moments for McCainiacs as the Virginia returns were tabulated but otherwise it was a big night. He erases embarrassing setbacks in La. and Ks. over the weekend. He has over 800 delegates by all counts now. He is probably only 250 delegates away from clinching the nomination.

Is he impatient for Mike Huckabee to bow out? YOU BET! Huckabee’s continued presence in the race keeps alive the discussion of McCain’s weak support among strong conservatives. When Huckabee is finally gone conservative carping will further diminish for lack of a McCain alternative and the unification process will progressively accelerate. Will some conservatives NEVER back McCain? Probably. But don’t underestimate the potential for that to change. When those same conservatives are confronted with an imminent election of Obama or Clinton, they may see things differently.
Huckabee will focus on Texas and Ohio for the next few weeks. That’s going to force McCain to continue to campaign as opposed to taking a victory lap and starting the general election organizational push we described in earlier posts.

With all due respect to the spectacular campaign that McCain so understandably praises at every opportunity…McCain is the presumptive nominee now and barring a catastrophic change Huckabee is not going to win.

McCain has much work to do and for now is not yet free of the HUCK! Once again proving that the grassroots are never to be underestimated.

 McCain has to raise a ton of money, he needs a bigger team, he needs to fold the RNC into his message machine, he needs a back channel to coordiate with the White House.  He needs to get the GOP’s House and Senate campaign committees in sync.  He must wrangle the GOP special interests into some sort of a cohesive machine.  He needs an electoral college strategy, a popular vote strategy, and a long term general election plan.  He needs to start defining the opposition and chart out his positive and negative messaging  evolution through November.  He’ll need to run new ads.  He’ll need to identify his battlegrounds for the fall.  He’ll need to carefully review the calendar to see what events to use and avoid.

Some things are easily anticipated: Memorial Day, the 4th of July, Labor day, conventions, debates.

But there are other things; sheduled reports to congress from the DOD and the CIA on Iraq and the world,  economic reports from the Fed Chairman and the admin on the economy.  The budget battle will be another major issue that comes in the fall.

In the meantime McCain will continue to visit and campaign in the remaining primary states but his message will shift to general election positioning.

Mike Huckabee is likely to beat him in several more states.  But even during intermittent defeats McCain will find will opportunity to shore up his conservative credentials and start trying to define the fall race.

While Obama and Clinton battle, McCain would like to concentrate on framing democrats.  But he’ll have a second concurrent task with rallying his own party.

He will have to unite senators who have resented his maverick streak. He will have to unite house members who always resent senators.  He will not have to overcome the fact that no senator has won the WH since JFK, because his democratic rival is gonna be a Senator too.

But make no mistake, while there may not be as much intensity in plain view, behind the scenes the scramble is on.   McCain knows against democrats he now has a head start in planning for the fall…he also knows he needs every break he can get to prepare….the McCain Machine is in production

” I want to congratulate Governor Huckabee and his supporters on their success today. Not for the first time, he has surprised the rest of us….I salute you…And I want to congratulate Governor Romney as well on his wins today. He and I have been going at it pretty hard over the last few weeks, and he is a tough competitor….This election, like any election, is a rough and tumble business…But I have respect for people who are willing to accept the extraordinary demands, all the ups and downs, of such a tough and long contest. And Governor Romney has mine”

So said John McCain as he spoke to his supporters in Phoenix, Arizona. He arrived there earlier in the day .

He won New York, Arizona, Oklahoma, Delaware, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, California and Missouri AND won delegates in numerous other states won by Romney and Huckabee.

Huckabee swept the southern states with little organization or money. He won his home state as well as Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama, with the help of evangelical voters, after gaining a victory in the West Virginia state convention early in the day.

He made it clear he was forging ahead:

“A lot of people have been trying to say that this is a two-man race,” Huckabee said in Little Rock Tuesday night. “Well, you know what — it is, and we’re in it.”

Romney’s wins included Massachusetts, along with North Dakota and Utah, where he got strong support from his fellow Mormons. He also won the Montana caucuses, Colorado and Minnesota. He too said the race was still on.

“We’re going to go all the way to the convention. We’re going to win this thing.”

The precise delegate count won’t be completed for a few days.

The tit for tat continues:

McCain called out Romney demanding an apology to Dole. Romney’s campaign said they tried to call Bob Dole unsuccessfully.

While this dust-up continues McCain finds himself in a tighter than expected battle for some of the Super Tuesday states while taking hits for not being conservative enough….Romney could get upset by Huckabee in some southern and midwest states. Huck is doing better than expected and it could be that the Peach state ends up in the win column for him. He also won 18 delegates in West Virginia. (see earlier post)……
This Super Tuesday delegate race could go late into night. Mccain’s hoped- for blow-out may be evaporating. In California and Missouri, Romney appears to have made up some ground.
McCain looks like a smaller winner than expected and Huckabee may be splitting a big part of self described conservatives with Romney.

In West Va, a state that Romney was confident he had locked up, Huckabee bested Romney with a little help from his friend, McCain and his delegates…..The Romney campaign was quick to react issuing the following statement;

Romney has had organization, paid staff and volunteers in West Va for months……neither McCain nor Huckabee organized this 18 delegate state convention state..
Romney was confident of a win there and looked forward to announcing another gold early afternoon during the peak of voting on Super Tuesday.
In the first round of votes, Mitt led, followed by Huck and third, McCain. Because of the state convention rules of W.VA a second round of votes quickly followed and McCain’s delegates threw their support to Huck and he instantly won this “winner take all” state.
WV McCain delegate John Vuolo says that former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer approached him and other McCain supporters in person at the WV convention and told them he (Roemer) had spoken to McCain and the best thing to do at this point was to support Huckabee in the hope that Huck could beat Romney there.

CPAC showdown?
Huckabee and Romney supporters hope to turn the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC this week into an anti-McCain fest.
Mitt, Huck and McCain are all slated to speak and if McCain does not all but lock it up Super Tuesday, CPAC provides his rivals with a great chance to again argue that McCain is not reliably or sufficiently conservative enough to lead the GOP.
Also: watch for the anti-McCain whisper campaign about ethics.
The Az Sen and former Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee faces no allegations, investigations or charges, but recently acknowledged hiring Washington super lawyer Bob Bennett amid reports in the NYT’s of ethics concerns swirling around McCain.