Looking Ahead

Mark McKinnon is a republican strategist and consultant who worked on presidential campaigns for George W. Bush and John McCain and now writes for The Daily Beast. In 2009, he started posting and updating his top 10 list of potential republican candidates for president in 2012. On June 3, 2009, this is how the field looked to him, ranked in order:

1. Mitt Romney
2. Tim Pawlenty
3. John Thune
4. Mike Huckabee
5. Sarah Palin
6. Mark Sanford
7. Bobby Jindal
8. Newt Gingrich
9. Jon Huntsman
10. John Ensign

Plus Jeb Bush as a "longshot". Four years later, with the wisdom of hindsight, there's a lot of fun to be had looking back. Obviously, no one on the list was elected president, although Romney did indeed get the nomination and three others (T Paw, Newt and Huntsman) ran in the primaries. Thune, Huckabee, Palin and Jindal declined to run, and most interesting to me, not one but two of the distinguished statesmen on this list flamed out in sex scandals, namely Don't Cry For Me Argentina luvguv Mark Sanford, and Sleeping With My Best Friend's Wife Senator John Ensign. Who's not on the list? Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, all of whom were also declared (and unsuccessful) candidates.

Things sure can change in three years. Have you heard anything about John Thune lately? (If you've never heard of him at all, he's a senator from South Dakota.) So with that in mind, here's one of the first lists I've seen of potential republican candidates for 2016 and note, I would again add Jeb Bush, possibly not such a longshot this time around:

Marco Rubio (Senator from Florida)
Bobby Jindal (Governor of Louisiana)
Paul Ryan (Congressman from Wisconsin and 2012 VP nominee)
Chris Christie (Governor of New Jersey)
Rand Paul (Senator from Kentucky)
Ted Cruz (Senator from Texas)
Rick Santorum (former Senator from Pennsylvania and runner-up to Mitt Romney in 2012)

Will any of these guys be standing on the Capitol steps on January 20, 2017? Will one (or more) of them get caught in a scandal? Is there a dark horse/fresh face hiding somewhere who will bubble to the surface and shake up the race, as Barack Obama did for the democrats in 2006? The 2016 campaign is already underway, which is both intriguing and depressing, and I haven't even mentioned Hillary...