This is the guy to watch. Of all the candidates running, Huckabee can likely make the most effective appeal to GOP primary voters. He's a southern Republican governor with conservative credentials who can likely raise enough money to keep him in the field. Right now, the top three candidates are Giuliani, McCain, and Romney, but neither of these three are really "party insiders". With Giuliani, I simply don't see a liberal urban New Yorker winning the Republican nomination. He's popular now, but once the electorate gets to know him more beyond his heroics during 9/11, they will pull back. There is more than enough negative material for his opponents to exploit during the campaign. Expect his poll numbers to drop substantially over the next few months, as new opponents like Huckabee emerge. McCain has already become yesterday's news. His appeal was his political independence, but the appearance is that he has gone too far to the right to win the nomination, and it looks quite ingenuous. Conservatives in particular don't trust him, and they never will. Meanwhile, his lurch to the right has cost him voters in the middle. That's why he has seen a 60% drop in his poll ratings over the past 4 months. Romney's weak conservative credentials, along with his light political resume may all be liabilities for him. Like McCain, voters arent buying his recent conversion to the conservative cause.

That leaves the opportunity for a dark horse to emerge as a consensus candidate. I think that Huckabee likely fits the bill here. He's a little weak on foreign policy, and I'm not too sure he can expand the partys base during a general election, as he may be a bit too conservative to win independent swing state voters, but he certainly has enough appeal to get the nomination.