Here is my guess for the 2012 candidates

Mitt Romney-Form Mass Govenor.
Mike Huckabee-Form two term Arkansase Governor
Mark Sanford-two term South Carolina Governor.
Tim Pawlenty-two term Minnesota governor. Was McCain’s number two choice
Saxby Chambliss -most well know republican senator right now.

There may one or two other conservative candidates who will run. It will be interesting to see Huckabee and Romney go after each other.

Here is my guess for the 2012 candidates

Mitt Romney-Form Mass Govenor.
Mike Huckabee-Form two term Arkansase Governor
Mark Sanford-two term South Carolina Governor.
Tim Pawlenty-two term Minnesota governor. Was McCain’s number two choice
Saxby Chambliss -most well know republican senator right now.

There may one or two other conservative candidates who will run. It will be interesting to see Huckabee and Romney go after each other.

as long as it is legal, I’m not going to insist that Romney spends his PAC money in the manner he indicated when soliciting it.

I have little doubt that Romney is the establishment candidate going into 2012 as McCain was in 2008…but his day is done!

After spending a small fortune on his campaign and crippling everyone else in the field…he couldn’t close the deal…

I’ve said it before…and I’ll say it again here…Romney is the establishment choice this time because he made a deal at the CPAC Convention for their backing if he would step aside for McCain…

I’m making my prediction here….unless Conservatives unite behind a single candidate like Palin…Romney will be our candidate in 2012 against the will of a majority of the Republican Party! and plastic man will follow Dole and McCain into obscurity!

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

How do you feel about Shelby

Just because something is legal doesn’t make it okay to do. Lying and misrepresenting yourself may not technically be illegal in these circumstances, but it doesn’t bode well for how you treat people and your constituents.

Come on, this ought to be clear.

to run for POTUS. We need a young, energetic conservative.

… people had got too attached and too pig-headed to consider anyone but “my 1st choice.” … just about any of the same names will polarize and set up the next MAJOR disappointment in the General Election.

IMHO, It will be best to have the newer/fresh faces with the “other guys” supporting them with VP chances. Anything else, fractures and and repeats 2008.

I suppose if she learns to speak in complete sentences sometime in the next two years, she’ll have a shot. But she was embarrassingly inarticulate when off-script, and she cannot stay that way and have a serious national future.

didn’t work out so well for Hillary.

because we don’t have any idea what the major issues of the campaign will be in the future. If the economy continues to decline at the rate it is today, Obama will “own” the recession and he will be unable of pretending it was Bush’s fault; the American people are a fickle people who only evaluate the performance of a candidate in a basic and reductionist frame work. If that is the case, Romney, whose expertise on the economy (and whose father ran a successful auto company) will be able to articulate the case best against Obama. Who’s to say that some major scandal will befall the anointed one, in which case we should run the candidate who best portends to the public construction of a moral candidate (Palin is probably good here, but Romney wouldn’t as an example).

If I were to begin to weigh the options, I would probably look to competent governors who’ve had the time to think about national issues and has shown they can articulate them well. Palin is a work in progress as of now, but could be dangerously persuasive if she obtains the gravitas necessary to compete at the national level. My hunch tells me it will be someone who has out performed the national party consistently in the last couple of elections, is operating in a swing state (or a bluish state), and is, naturally, extremely popular and respected. Jindal should wait several years at least before running for president; he should run for reelection in 2011 in LA, and then in 2016 or 2020 run for president. He should use the intervening years to cultivate relations with those in the party’s hierarchy as well as in the MSM (Reagan was well known by everyone in Washington and open to the media in multiple ways, so he had time to craft his own narrative years before he ran for president). He can have certain positions of his “evolve”, if you will, to be more palatable to the general public and to the all important median voter (evolve pun most definitely intended).

Oh dear. I just realized that, in a post castigating others over the over speculation of the the next election, I spent the majority of my time speculating about the next election. Que sera sera…