Where Is the GOP's Rising Star for 2012?

As President Barack Obama’s ratings again slip into the low-to-mid 40s, no potential Republican candidate is even close to capturing the imagination and fervor of the huge built-in anti-Obama sentiment inside the GOP, tea party and conservative movement.

In fact, the candidates are failing so badly that unelectable names like Donald Trump and Newt Gingrich are actually getting news coverage.

If these two are getting coverage, it tells us that we have no one. And the so-called serious candidates, like Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour and Tim Pawlenty are most definitely not catching fire. In fact, the more they are seen, the less they are liked. Quote after quote from audience members at each public appearance highlight the fact that there is just no passion for any of these men — while there is desperate passion to defeat the president in 2012.

At the same time, there is rising discontent on the right with the GOP House leadership. Speaker John Boehner is caught between a rock and a hard place: If he tries to forge deals with the Senate Democrats and the White House, his tea party freshmen revolt. Conversely, when he assuages the right, he has to take such hardline positions that no deal with the Democrats is possible.

As predicted here before, the debt ceiling increase vote will be an epic battle between the GOP leadership and the tea party. It will likely shatter the fragile GOP-tea party coalition.

Indeed, tea party members all around the nation today are growing increasingly hostile to the GOP with longtime stalwarts like Orrin Hatch and Richard Lugar sure to face difficult primaries in 2012.

The American economy remains in a morass and thus Obama, too, is languishing. He ducks and dodges the world stage.

Egypt: after the initial post-Mubarak heady days of seeming victory, things are back to normal. And it is worth asking: will the army really allow its power to be diminished by democratic elections?

Libya: Gadhafi has, so far, survived. He butchers his people. It looks like he might stay in power.

Saudia Arabia and Bahrain: The Saudi royal family has learned its lessons and brutally repressed any demonstrations in the Kingdom.

Thus, the sweeping pro-freedom revolution appears to have fizzled out.

Japan: the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown will be used by the left here to try to stop future nuclear reactors at a time we need them to offset our dependence of foreign oil.

Here we have oil prices spiking. Has anyone thought about $5 per gallon?  And yet the environmental left won’t let us drill and also wants to stop future nuclear reactors.

How are we to acquire energy?

The only salvation would be a new candidate — savvy and smart — who can unite the tea party passion and the GOP and then harness the fervent anti-Obama sentiment that is lurking out there.

When you find that candidate, please give me a call.