"Neither Mike Pence nor DeMint are running, so you're posting names that can't be debated."
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We do not know who will be running. The field will fill out after the 2010 elections. I am hoping that someone like a Mike Pence or a Jim DeMint will jump into the race then as the current choices do not excite me much. Why limit debate to choices that are being put before us now when it is a given that more perspective candidates will jump into the race. Not even the candidates who are currently being discussed have actually announced.
Mike Pence has actually announced he isn't running, period. DeMint has said no, and recently a few here have championed his not closing it out entirely when he said "it would be the last thing in the world he would want". It's just seriously unlikely (I personally wouldn't mind him running at all).
And no, we don't know who's running, other than Romney, and Pawlenty are in. Huckabee is a probable, Sarah Palin seems to be as well.
There are names bandied about here that are unrealistic, such as Hunter and Bachmann plus a few others who are congressmen, and that's just unrealistic and la la land thinking. No congressman is going to get close to the nomination, it hasn't happened in over a century for good reason.
A couple of potential darkhorses, but the likelihood imho is it will come down to either Romney or Palin.