(image from World magazine)

As ABC News’ Jake Tapper reports, some members of the GOP’s social conservative base are calling for Sen. John McCain to not pick former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney.

Beginning today in a newspaper ad in Prescott, Ariz., where Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., ended his week-long biographical tour, a group of social conservatives has started lobbying McCain to avoid picking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as his running mate.

Read the PDF of the ad here. The signers aren’t lightweights either. 

Signatories include Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, who once endorsed Romney but has come to regret his decision, as well as officials of Concerned Women for America, the American Family Association, Operation Rescue, Massachusetts Citizens for Life …

McCain would be wise to heed calls to avoid Romney; the conservative group who sponsored the Arizona ad, “Government is not God,” has launched an online petition that is emblematic of the worry gripping social conservatives. These concerns are echoed in a story in the latest edition of World, a leading conservative Christian magazine. 

A month ago, as the dust settled from the Texas primary, dozens of conservative Christian leaders met in New Orleans to talk about what was next. They eventually agreed one thing: they should’ve backed former Ark. Gov. Mike Huckabee: 

… venerable Paul Weyrich—a founder of the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the Council for National Policy (CNP)—raised his hand to speak. Weyrich is a man whose mortality is plain to see. A freak accident several years ago left him with a spinal injury, which ultimately led to both his legs being amputated in 2005. He now gets around in a motorized wheelchair. He is visibly paler and grayer than he was just a few years ago, a fact not lost on many of his friends in the room, some of whom had fought in the political trenches with him since the 1960s.

The room—which had been taken over by argument and side-conversations—became suddenly quiet. Weyrich, a Romney supporter and one of those Farris had chastised for not supporting Huckabee, steered his wheelchair to the front of the room and slowly turned to face his compatriots. In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “Friends, before all of you and before almighty God, I want to say I was wrong.”

In a quiet, brief, but passionate speech, Weyrich essentially confessed that he and the other leaders should have backed Huckabee, a candidate who shared their values more fully than any other candidate in a generation. He agreed with Farris that many conservative leaders had blown it. By chasing other candidates with greater visibility, they failed to see what many of their supporters in the trenches saw clearly: Huckabee was their guy.

McCain would win immeasurable (and very valuable) kudos from social conservatives by tapping Huckabee as his VP, and soon, ideally by the end of the spring. And if not Huckabee, then someone like him.