2012: Who will the GOP nominate?

When picking presidential nominees, Republicans traditionally choose the next in line, said Jonathan Martin in Politico.com. But for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the GOP runner-up in 2008, that tradition appears under siege. In Massachusetts, Romney ushered in a health-care-reform plan that strongly resembles what Republicans call “Obamacare”—including a mandate for individuals to buy insurance. That bit of heresy spells trouble among the GOP’s Tea Party wing. As a result, many prominent Romney backers in 2008 are now sitting on the fence, looking for a fresher face. They’ll have plenty of alternatives, said Neil King Jr. in The Wall Street Journal. Among those who’ve already expressed interest are Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Less well-known, but also testing the waters, are South Dakota Sen. John Thune, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Just this week, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman hinted he might join the growing GOP field, announcing he was resigning as U.S. ambassador to China this spring.

If Republicans are hoping for a “white knight” to emerge from this group of badly flawed candidates, said Ed Kilgore in The New Republic, they’ll be disappointed. At this point in the 2008 election cycle, eight Republicans and seven Democrats, including Barack Obama, had launched exploratory committees or full-fledged campaigns. Running for president takes lots of money, name recognition, and a willingness “to campaign like a wolverine in heat.” In about a month, the GOP campaign season begins in earnest, with a presidential-candidate forum in Iowa, the first primary state. That pretty much limits the field to the party’s existing big names—Romney, Huckabee, Gingrich, Pawlenty, and Palin. “Talk about anyone else is just a sign of denial.”

It’s too soon to rule anyone out, said Michael Barone in National Review Online. You can “ramp up a campaign pretty quickly in the Facebook era.” Let’s stop panicking, said William Kristol in The Weekly Standard. I keep hearing my fellow Republicans wail, “WE NEED A CANDIDATE! NOW!” But ours is the party of free markets, and let’s see what “a robust competition” of the country’s top conservatives brings us during the primary process. With a second term, Obama would take the country further down the road to his vision of a state-run utopia. So “the 2012 GOP nomination would be a terrible thing to waste.”

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