Politico gets Karl Rove's thoughts on the current crop of candidates.
Rove said he sees Mitt Romney as the current favorite for the Republican nomination in 2012, “because he was the runner-up last time around, [and] we have a tendency in the Republican Party” to go with the runner-up the next time.
.... Who else could it be? “[Minnesota Gov.] Tim Pawlenty or [Indiana Gov.] Mitch Daniels or potentially Sarah Palin or [House Republican Conference chairman] Mike Pence, or somebody who emerges in the 2010 elections,” Rove said.
As an aside, three days after Palin resigned, Rove told O'Reilly how difficult it would be for Palin to explain it away.
"How does she answer the question of, and, look, I say this as a fan, I'm terribly disappointed in this, because I think it hurts her as a viable choice in 2012.
It may make her more viable in 2016, but how does she answer the question of 'Jeez, it was too tough for me to be governor of the state of Alaska, but I'm tough enough to be President of the United States'?
That's an awful difficult question to answer, at this point."
