Once again the Republicans begin the chase for the shiny new toy. Instead of finding a competent politician that has a career of cutting budgets, good governance, leadership, and ability, the Republicans are once again chasing a bunch of unknowns who have little leadership ability, no ability to govern, and ever expanding government.

Maybe someday, conservatives will learn that rewarding success and punishing failure is a better way to find candidates instead of chasing politicains with little record of success.

Let's look at the record of Republican presidents during my lifetime.

Dwight Eisenhower was a well known and widely respected WW2 general before he ran for president. Richard Nixon was Eisenhower's Vice President. Ronald Reagan ran for president first in 1976 and was already famous then both for his California governorship and his radio show. George H. W. Bush was Reagan's Vice President.

Then we come to George W. Bush who was relatively unknown as the Governor of Texas. His main competition was lovable loser John McCain who then was the very next Republican Party nominee.

Mitt Romney came in 2nd to McCain in the 2008 primaries. History says he will be the next Republican president. He will certainly be the nominee in 2012.

Sorry.

If your list and options is IT for the GOP in 2012, they had better get busy on the ground work for 2016.

Speaking for myself, a life-long indie from MN and WI(voted for Proxmire and Reagan) execs Romney or Pawlenty will not garner my vote for lack of principle and passion.

GOP machine faithful like Barbour are not attractive to indies.

The last legislator w/out exec experience becoming POTUS should remind us of this as a signal disqualification. Love DeMint and Pence, but Daniels would be a better offer even were he to refuse service.

"but she is worth mention as a possible VP candidate sometime down the line." Indeed.

Rubio is a brighter star than Brown.

The pundit attempts to analyze Sarah Palin continue to amuse me. Her career as a public servant is over; she will never again hold any major elected office. And y'know what? I think she knows that, and I think she doesn't care. I think she likes what she's doing right now, and she isn't about to give it up for "rebuilding her image" or "guiding the Republican policy agenda" or any other such rot.

Romney will never win because of RomneyCare. That one item on his resume will force him to run way right in the primaries, after which he'll get butchered as a flip-flopper in the general election.

Gingrich or Huckabee -- never. They might win a primary campaign, but never a general one. Too much baggage. Gingrich will never live down the failure of the 1994 Republican Revolution, and Huckabee is too easily caricatured as a nutcase religious fundamentalist.

I looke up and down the Republican Party, and I don't see anybody who has the ability to win in both the primary and the general election campaign. Just like 2008.

It's Huck for me and you dismissed him too easily. I think you will be surprised at the support he has built through his fox show and the amount of speaking/travelling he has done since 08. Plus his PAC may not be raising tons of money, but he has endorsed key candidate in key states and his grassroots team is working hard. He is smart to fly under the radar with you bloggers. I'll be laughing at all of you when he is the eventual nominee.

George Bush unknown? HUH?

Before the last election the buzz was all about Bobby Jindal. Now his name doesn't even make the "maybe" list.

Let me put it this way, Lynn: between Barry Lackwit and a guy who thinks freedom of religion (and presumably the rest of the Constitution) can be sidestepped at will, I'm not at all sure which is the lesser of the two evils.

I suspect I'm not alone in that, either.

Huckabee distinguishes himself from Michael Bloomberg only in that he's active in his Southern Baptist church, and he uses this distinction to mislead Christian Right voters into supporting him.

Mike Huckabee is a faux-con, not a so-con.

One of the things that annoys me about Gov. Romney is that he either not willing to defend the beliefs of his Church or he thinks that conservative Christians are too stupid to understand that there are large theological differences between Protestant Christianity and Mormonism. It's perfectly reasonable for him to believe something different from me and there are a lot of good and decent people who are not Christians but to state that the two belief systems are the same is a obvious lie that turns off Christians. Many of those Christians are the conservative voters he needs to win over.

Romney is a global warmist? DOA then.

What about Bobby Jindal? He's a sleeper.

Very high IQ/talent AND a solid conservative. That's the combination we need. We need someone to take a wrecking ball to the leftist institutions in this country and the ability to govern as well.

We need someone to take a wrecking ball to the leftist institutions in this country.

This indeed, appears to be the primary strategy of the GOP, as described by Caroline Myss. The Republican Strategy: Covert Destruction at all Costs.

The long term Republican agenda is to sabotage this Democratic administration so successfully as to make it appear responsible for all the failures of the Bush administration while simultaneously preventing this administration from accomplishing anything on its own merit, even to the detriment of the good of this nation.

Next, we have Sarah Palin, one of the more covert schemes of the Republican agendas. What makes Sarah part of Republican covert strategy? Simple-Sarah doesn't even realize that she is being used by the Republican brain trust as their Vamp distraction - the poor thing.

The Republican creed of "less government" is in truth one of "corporate government".

Dream on Steve.

Umm, no Stevie.

Obamalama is primarily responsible for his own failures. It is he who is damaging our recovery by creating uncertainty with his push for loony leftist policies.

You can spare your Huffin-and-Puffin propaganda. We ain't buying here.

"Corporate governance", pshaw. Tell that to Barack's BFFs in GE and other biggies.

What is meant by "wrecking ball to the leftist institutions" - defund "community groups" like ACORN, denazify the totalitarian indoctrination mills of our educational system, from K through University, defund the National Endowment for the (Liberal Propaganda) Arts, empower individuals and families with choices in healthcare, education, and taxation and encourage small businessmen and entrepreurs to put this country back on track. The taxpayer subsidized march to socialism is over, buddy.

entrepreurs=entrepreneurs

JB your advertised, populist, 5th avenue, 50 thousand dollar, Sak's dressed with accessories, Sarah Palin, if she has a coherent political philosophy (that would be elitist), is in at least two major ways, much more socialist than Obama.

Sarah Palin just presided a huge redistribution of wealth when she signed an energy "rebate" of $1,200 for every man, woman and child in Alaska. The money for that wealth redistribution comes from our collective wealth, which we have thanks to our state (Alaska's) constitution ... The framers of our constitution wisely didn't want state resources to be privatized, as they are in Texas, for example, where the people of that state are separated from their wealth by billionaires. Thanks to the framers of our state's constitution, our collective ownership of state resources guarantees low taxes and high revenues, not to mention a Permanent Fund dividend program, another socialist scheme that gave each Alaskan over $2,000 this year ... Truth be told, when Gov. Palin redistributes the wealth held in common by the people of Alaska, she is fulfilling the socialist dream of many of Alaska's pioneers.

Secondly, with Palin´s enthusiastic support for Medicare, she implies that she would like to provide essentially unlimited government coverage for her 'child with down syndrome' as well as her parents".

On paper, Rudy would be a great bet (strong fiscal conservative, significant executive leadership accomplishments and credibility, if not necessarily experience, on foreign policy), but I fear his lengthy absense from elected office and the stink of failure brought by his poor showing in the '08 primaries, seals his fate as the top of the ticket nominee (still holding out hope he'll be nominated as veep though).

And that's the problem with this crop. The potential nominees are either too green to make a run in '12 (Jindal, Cantor, Christie, Brown), damaged goods due to prior campaign and/or policy positions (Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich), or both (Palin). Hopefully Pence can live up to his hype because if he doesn't I really don't see any credible alternative.

Steve Crickmore,

You are either dishonest or an idiot, which is it?

The Alaska Oil Dividend has been in place since the early 1980's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

-------------------------------------------

bryanD,

Taking advice from you (or any other of the resident Trolls) about a Republican nominee would be like the farmer taking advice from the fox on how best to secure the chicken coop.

So, you're just wasting your time and ours.

Alan,

"her percieved devisiveness" is a smoke screen perpetrated by the far left out of fear.

"may trouble Republicans who simply deem her too risky" these are the stupid chicken little RINOs who keep saying we need to move to the left to save the party.

"but the "Woe is me" stance only goes so far in a presidential campaign" I must have missed it, because I don't recall any 'woe is me' from Palin...EVER

"While she wins arguments with David Letterman and the creators of Family Guy, these dustups undermine her efforts to cultivate a perception of leadership." The whole 'not responding to your critics' bag was shown to be a colossal failure of the Bush administration. These lefty bastards won't just go away if you ignore them.

"As the left appear geared to define Republicans as mere obstructionists, it is disappointing that Palin has not used her visibility to help direct the Republican policy agenda." What the hell are you talking about? She most certainly has used her visibility to define an agenda. Just see her posts on Facebook for good examples. If the brain dead morons in Republican leadership ignore that, well, that's there mistake.

-syb

!@#$ there = their at the end of last post

Sarah Palin isn't my "frontrunner", douchebag.

And, btw, here's what some conservatives think of your deceitful whines about "corporate governance":

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/big-business-as-an-opponent-of-free-markets/

Sheik, I wasn't talking about the energy dividend, but the $1,200 redistributive, 'one off' energy rebate Palin introduced to Alaskans in 2008, in addition to receiving the oil dividend. Not bad, sounds like sound socialist or government social democratic policy to me. Of course, this was before Palin became worried about defining a 180 degree reverse to the Dems, strict national GOP capitalist agenda as many such as you are preoccupied with.

If United States of America's President and Armed Forces Commander In Chief-Elect Sarah Louise Heath Ronald Wilson Reagan Palin wants to take the "Elect" from her job description, I will bet New york City to a single brick the gig's already hers!

PALIN/BOLTON/2012!

The ticket should be Romney/Pawlenty. Period.

Unless we can secure our election process before 2012, none of this will matter.

Soros and his "chose decline" gang are doing more than sucking up our assets. Realizing that we are onto their Acorn type shenanigans, they are going after the election higher ups, the Secretary of States. They are putting their men in so they can influence the results of presidential and congressional elections.

Annita, the Acorn whistle blower, has given us the heads up. Here is a link to their "Secretary of State project" website.
http://www.secstateproject.org/

A clip from the site:

To Our SoS Project Supporters -

Since we launched in the fall of 2005, we have engaged in eleven races and have backed the winning candidate in nine states...

We are proud of our 2006 victory in Minnesota, where long time reformer Mark Ritchie pulled off a major upset, with our support. He... oversaw the recount of the Franken/Coleman senatorial race... finally sending Franken to the Senate, where his vote is much needed.

With your support, we have made a major difference. We can be sure that the Republicans and the opponents of honest elections will try triply hard to regain lost seats and capture seats held by reformers.

- The Secretary of State Project"

IMO the nominee will not be from the current batch. Also the nominee will be much more conservative than McCain or Romney.

IMO many are going overboard on what is meant by "obscurity". In this context, it usually means someone who is not being considered likely as a possible candidate at this moment. It has nothing to do with if someone has political experience or not.