2012 GOP Candidate

There is one guy on the GOP side that has garnered my attention, though I don't know a whole lot about him yet, Jon Huntsman. My initial knee-jerk reaction is that this guy may have rock-star potential. We'll find out soon enough. OTOH, he doesn't come across as a total ass, so that may hurt his chances. I'm pretty sure he's not Ron Paul, who is also probably toast, largely because he is adamantly anti-big gov. An odd dichotomy in a strange world, eh?
His best qualification is that he is not a 90's retread, and he's not fucking nuts. I'm just learning about him now. Awfully popular governor--80 to 90% approval ratings in office. Only chink in his armor is that he served his country as Ambassador to China under Barack until a couple weeks ago. He's a lot like Romney except not so slimy, and he's fluent in Chinese. Very mainstream; remains to be seen if the Republicans can stomach that. Unlike most current GOP hopefuls, he does not represent electoral suicide for the Party. And thats really it with the GOP, isn't it? Can the GOP faithful stomach a candidate who places his country above his political party?
It's going to be an interesting GOP primary. I'm hearing from my friends in New Hampshire that Ron Paul is on fire up there. NH Republicans tend to be less socially conservative while being fiscal hawks, and Paul is surging with them. If Paul wins the NH primary, it is going to throw the GOP establishment into turmoil. This will be followed by one of the RWNJ candidates, Bachmann is my pick, winning in South Carolina. In the end, the big money guys are going to throw a zillion bucks at Huntsman, so he can put Humpty together again in hopes of beating Obama. He doesn't have the kind of flip-flop baggage Romney has. So, Huntsman makes my top pick as a GOP wildcard, and that's mostly due to his unknowns. The rest of the field is beyond laughable.
Gingrich's entry is good news for Obama. Gingrich will be portrayed as an old retread fat cat who wants to be the standard bearer for a party stuck in the past. He's going to be great cannon fodder.
IMO, Huntsman is going to be the nominee.
I'd love to see Ron Paul and Barack Obama mano-a-mano in a debate. But that won't happen, although its my belief thats exactly what our county needs. The mainstream on the right seems to have a decidedly anti-statist point of view and the left wants too much state. Anarchy vs. Fascism. Paul vs. Obama would let the country see neither choice is desirable and we could at long last, finally, begin to realize that we must settle somewhere in the middle and put an end to the polarity from which we suffer.