I don't know about that. Jindal for example had that whole bizarre exorcism thing... He is very charismatic, but I think that if he put his hat in the ring for real he would have ended up at the crazy table with Bachmann and Trump. Paul Ryan has generally suffered from low approval ratings. Last I saw he was at like 40% in his home district even and very possibly not going to be re-elected. Mitch Daniels I don't know much about.
One thing that I think is pretty revealing is the tea party's response to Ron Paul. On paper, he has been fighting for everything the tea party says they want for his whole life. Nobody is more aggressively in favor of hyper tiny government than Ron Paul. But they denounce him as a liberal. A freaking liberal. Ron Paul. What that says to me is that they aren't actually looking for a particular policy position, they're looking for crazy and stupid. And while Ron Paul supports all their purported policy, he is only half crazy and he is very smart, so they don't like him. They don't want somebody that has a realistic picture of the world. They see realistic pictures of the world as being "too liberal". They want somebody that is as out of touch with reality as Glenn Beck, I really think they do. Bachmann and Trump, for example, clearly fall in Glenn Beck land and they loved them.
But somebody like Beck could never win in a general election, and half the party is disgusted with people like Beck. So I don't see how a candidate could satisfy their apparent lust for crazy while still satisfying the more sensible end of the party, let alone winning in the general.. I dunno. I mean, ultimately somebody will win the primary, and both sides will try to get behind them, and then both sides will claim that the candidate was a RINO when it turns out he sucks... But I do think there is a fracture in the GOP. It's like they're forced to be in the same party because we have a two party system, but they're really more naturally be two parties I think.
