WARWICK — Strumming an electric bass, rocking to Wilson Pickett’s 1966 classic “Mustang Sally,” Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee entertained and campaigned yesterday before 500 admirers in a hotel ballroom as he boosted his never-say-die campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.

The glib, witty former Arkansas governor knows he is running a campaign that becomes more of a long shot by the day, but says he doesn’t intend to bow to Arizona Sen. John McCain until the Republicans meet to choose their candidate at the September national convention in St. Paul, Minn.

“I keep reminding people this could go to the convention,” Huckabee told reporters before playing the guitar and speaking before the cheering supporters at the Crowne Plaza hotel — the same venue where McCain drew a crowd of 1,000 when he campaigned in Rhode Island on Feb. 14. “In politics the unexpected is the expected.”

“John McCain might have an implosive moment tomorrow,” said Huckabee. “This race is still on.”

McCain supporters and the Republican Party’s establishment leaders may wish Huckabee would just go away — maybe go back to Arkansas and author another weight-loss book — but he says he intends to fight on to give his supporters in states that have not voted yet the opportunity to cast their ballots for a true social conservative.

“I believe the people of Rhode Island are just as important as people anywhere else,” said Huckabee.

If his blue blazer, corporate red tie and oxford white shirt looked a bit out of place when he strapped on the bass, well, that is just the way Huckabee has campaigned since he surprised the political world by winning the Iowa caucuses in last month.

With his droll performances and his self-deprecating humor, Huckabee has managed to cloak views far outside the mainstream of American politics in the Northeast — he doesn’t believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution — in laughter and rock-and-roll.

To be sure, Huckabee doesn’t shy away from his views. He is against abortion, handgun control, embryonic stem cell research and same-sex marriage. Last night, he drew his biggest applause when he called for enactment of a Human Life amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prohibit abortion anywhere in the United States.

“The majority of Republicans in this country are conservative people,” said Huckabee, to more cheers. A onetime Baptist preacher, Huckabee leavens his conservative rhetoric with New Testament populist views, including helping the poor and combating hunger and disease.

“That doesn’t mean we’re going squishy on the sanctity of life or traditional marriage,” said Huckabee.

The Arkansan also touted his experience as a chief executive. He is the only one of the four candidates left in the presidential sweepstakes — McCain and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — who has been a governor.

“No one else running for president has ever been a chief executive of a government,” said Huckabee.

Huckabee visited the Community Prep School in Providence, a private school, did media interviews, met with the The Journal’s editorial board and addressed supporters at the Crowne Plaza.

He spent about 40 minutes with the editorial board, where he was critical of the primary-and-caucus system both parties use to winnow the presidential fields and effectively choose nominees.

“One of the problems I’ve had with this entire process, if you listen to the first 12 debates, we spent most all the time arguing over the issues of Iraq that frankly can’t define the Republicans because there’s not a dime’s difference with all the Republicans, with the exception of Ron Paul,” said Huckabee. (Paul opposes the Iraq war.)

Huckabee also lambasted the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, complaining that it takes control out of the hands of individual candidates and puts it in the hands of independent special-interest groups who can “hide in the trees and aim cheap shots” at people running for office.

None of the usual GOP insider crowd attended Huckabee’s events— no legislators, party leaders or Governor Carcieri, who endorsed McCain after the governor’s first choice, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, crashed and burned despite spending millions of his own money. Romney didn’t even win the New Hampshire primary in a state where he was well known as the neighboring governor.

Huckabee was introduced in Warwick by Dave Talan, chairman of the Providence Republican Committee and the party’s unsuccessful candidate for mayor in his home city in 2002. “In this campaign, the bigwigs, the VIPS, are the grass-roots volunteers,” said Talan.

SOME REPUBLICANS have taken to playing the parlor game of ‘What Does Huckabee Want?’ He brushes off questions about being selected as McCain’s running mate, but his supporters hope McCain will pick their man. “I think he would make a great vice-president,” said Bob Tingle, of South Kingstown, who ran against Democrat Jack Reed for the U.S. Senate in 2002.

“McCain’s not all that popular in the South,” said Tingle. “If McCain wants to unite the party, he would do well to choose Governor Huckabee. “I don’t think our party wins in November without a strong commitment from social conservatives. They are the grass roots, the people who volunteer and get the voters out.”

Huckabee has brought new people into the GOP. Robert Paquin III, of Warwick, is a 23-year-old real-estate property manager. He is the youngest candidate for national convention delegate running as a Republican. “I’m a young conservative Catholic” who is against abortion and hopes he can win a delegate slot to the national party confab.

Rhode Island could be poised to send some Huckabee delegates to the convention, even though everybody who is anybody in the party hierarchy is predicting a comfortable McCain victory. Unlike most state Republican parties, Rhode Island elects its delegates under a proportional representation system that is similar to the Democratic Party’s process.

Trudy Mitchell, a 42-year-old mother of two from Warwick, said, “I like the fact that he believes in something higher than himself, that he answers to a higher authority.”

“He has a lot of conservative values that I do and he has a compass, a moral compass,” Mitchell said. She acknowledged that Huckabee faces a steep climb to the GOP nomination, but believes he can win. “It may take a miracle, but I believe in miracles.”

With reports from staff writer Linda Borg