Economist piece by Lexington highlighting the "young guns" Eric Cantor of VA, Paul Ryan from WI and Kevin McCarthy from CA. All decent picks, but not a word about NJ's Chris Christie, who, to me, is the most interesting of the lot--despite being probably not experienced enough for 2012.
I read the piece less because I'm interested in the field than because I find myself running into such a strong consensus, wherever I travel, of Obama's profound weakness with the electorate. I've read the analysis that says, all he has to do is win the same percentages with Hispanics (easy due to GOP stance on immigration) and African-Americans (hard to see how he's disappointed them) and get himself not more than a third of whites and he wins all over again.
And yet, you keep running into signals that say the GOP base is fired up and the Dems' is not. We see Obama getting rougher--and rightly so--in his speeches, but you don't know how that's going to go over--as in, which side gets more fired up.
And so you have to consider these early profiles with all due seriousness. I see somebody either young or a clear outsider--just like Obama presented himself, enjoying all the same we-pour-into-this-empty-vessel-all-our-hopes-and-dreams-and-fears dynamic that our man from IL did three years ago.
All pretty near idle fancy at this point, but the mind does wander. Where is the technocrat who feels--more?