Republicans Priming for 2012

We check in for a third time with the fleet of wealthy middle-aged-to-elderly white men jostling for the Republican party's 2012 presidential nomination.

The Canadian election wrapped up last week, but the U.S. presidential campaign is just heating up. The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan checks in with some potential nominees who could lead the Grand Old Party – likely to be defeated at the hands Barack Obama, whose approval ratings are through the roof. Former speaker of the House and Republican stalwart Newt Gingrich has confirmed, but his chances are hampered by having been around Washington too long: “After 30 years on the national scene, he will find his candidacy affected by the old maxim that friends come and go but enemies accumulate.” Then there's Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who's given himself until the end of May to decide if he'll run. Noonan suspects that's just a way to build hype, as he's got a book coming out this autumn. “It would be odd to announce a few months before its release that you weren’t running, for that would undercut the ostensible purpose of a book – to disseminate your views – and undercut sales.”

Congressman Ron Paul, the ideological father to the tea party movement, has also thrown his hat into the ring for the third time as of Friday. Time's Michael Crowley notes his supporters' enthusiasm last time translated into next to nothing at the ballot box. “Now 75 years old – and as elfin and prone to rambling as ever – Paul seems unlikely to surpass his 2008 performance. It may not be right to ignore him entirely, but he’ll have to demonstrate a wider base of support before pundits and party leaders take him more seriously.”

These men's top priority will be dispatching the quickly flailing front-runner, Mitt Romney, who's saddled with having to explain the differences, of which there are few, between the health-care system he implemented in Massachusetts and Obama's national one, writes Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. “The conservative Romney head, which aspires to be the Republican presidential nominee, is trying urgently to separate itself from its conjoined liberal twin – but the brightest minds in health care have been unable to help him with this logical leap.” It's said that no good deed goes unpunished, and Mitt seems to be bearing that out.