In looking at the aftermath of Mitt Romney gracefully and graciously bowing out of the race so the party can consolidate, I had the initial reaction most probably did.  Basically that for the good of the party Mike Huckabee must follow suit.

Then upon reflection I had a change in perspective.

If Mike Huckabee were to bow out in like manner, it would be looked on favorably by the party establishment, but it would do the party no good for the following reason...Free Media.  As long as McCain has to continue to campaign so long as it does not get personal with charges of who isn't conservative and who is flying back and forth, but instead a campaign about policy choices, it enhances the positive converage of our eventual candidate and the platform of our party. If Huckabee were to drop out of the race most if not all the positive free media would be shifted to Hillary and Obama, while our candidate would have to pay to get positive media out about him.

Every debate gives McCain an opportunity to both excite the base of the party and reach out to the center by articulating the conservative principles that he agrees with in an eloquent and winsome manner.  The mainstream media will remain friendly to McCain as long as Mike Huckabee remains a candidate and John McCain has yet to clinch the nomination.  Once he clinches the nomination, he needs to have a war chest to deal with the inevitable changed tone that the media will display towards him.  Huckabee staying in gives McCain that opportunity to build up a defensive war chest, while remaining shielded from the inevitable smears that will come once he clinches the nomination.

Also, if the Democrat campaign goes undecided to convention they guarantee interest and higher ratings for their convention.  By the same token, if McCain were to sit a one hundred or less delegates away from the nomination going into our convention, the ratings to turn into our national convention would be significantly higher, giving us an opportunity to lay out in prime time television our party's platform in direct comparison to the Democrats.

In fact by staying in and focusing on just the merits of policy differences in a civil and friendly tone, Mike Huckabee can help both himself in the same way Ronald Reagan helped himself in 1976 and John McCain by giving him greater access to positive free media.