leading 2012 GOP presidential candidates as of early 2009?--May '08 edition

[JSojourner]

If Obama wins, I look for Huckabee, Palin and Thune to be leading contenders.  This does not preclude someone like Romney from running again.  With all that money?  Of course he will.  But will he have that early fan base that candidates need two years out?  Like Deaniacs, Clinton supporters or Obamaniacs?

Let me explain.

Huckabee is convinced God wants him to be President and millions of Americans are, too.  If McCain loses (or if he wins and governs from the center), you'll have televangelists screaming for Huckabee...crying their trademark crocodile tears over not supporting him enthusiastically enough the first time.  Huckabee will likely have had four years of media exposure under his belt.  You can bet your Bible he'll have his own radio talk show, regular slot on a major TV network and/or his own traveling salvation show on Sunday morning TV.  After all, Falwell and D. James Kennedy are dead.  And conservatives who don't like all the tongues and nonsense that come with Benny Hinn and Pat Robertson and that tribe would enjoy Huckabee.  He's conservative, but he's not Pentecostal.  He WILL run for President in 2012.

Palin will be different.  She will be the "draft" candidate sought by everyday Joes and Janes who want a fresh kind of candidate.  A lot will depend on how conservative she is perceived to be -- I note with not a little sadness that the "draft Olympia Snowe" effort which began in 2005 never got off the ground.  Snowe knows she can't win the GOP nomination.  If Palin is a rightie, without being what Torie would call a "nutter", she will have that webroots Republican scene locked up.

John Thune, though, could be the x factor.  Personally, I think he's a pretty dimbulb.  I've seen him debate both Johnson and Daschle.  Johnson and Daschle are hardly our party's best, and yet I think they dispatched him pretty effectively point by point.  That said, Thune's victory proves you needn't be the sharpest knife in the drawer to win an election.  What Thune is, is a smart politician with smarter advisors.  Ideologically, there's not a gnat's eyelash of difference between Thune and Jim DeMint, Jim Inhofe or Tom Coburn.  But...Thune has the looks and he has the political sense not to lead the charge on certain issues.  I think he'd be a terribly formidable candidate.

On the outside looking in?  Don't ever count out Mike Pence.  Forget that he's just a House member.  You can pretty much transpose everything I said about Thune and apply it to Pence, too.  And like Huckabee, he has the fire in the belly.

I do not think KBH will run.  Doesn't she want to be Governor of Texas?

If Obama wins this time, I suspect the GOP Primary field will consist of Romney, Huckabee, Thune, possibly Palin if the netroots like her, Pence, one or two "blast from the past" fringe candidates (like Gilmore and Tommy Thompson were this time) and, of course, a couple none of us are expecting.

And Bob Dole.  Tell you the truth, if Bob Dole did run for President in his 90's -- I'd vote for him just because he has chutzpah.