The hype surrounding Republican candidates, while temporarily entertaining, ultimately leads to nowhere for the GOP.

There are plenty of possible candidates vying for the Republican nomination in the 2012 election, but I believe that as more and more candidates enter the field, people take the candidates less and less seriously.

Even members within the Republican party acknowledge that the candidates are just not up to par (whatever par is for the GOP). POLITICO recently cited several Wall Street Journal articles saying that “too many conservative elites, Rick Perry is a dope, Michele Bachmann is a joke, and Mitt Romney is a fraud.”

Publishing these perspectives in a respectable, right-wing newspaper like the Journal is not a good indicator of Republican sentiment for their own candidates. Watching rumors of infighting between Karl Rove and his own creation, Rick Perry, unfold in the news is only another indicator about the frantic search for an appropriate Republican candidate.

Let us not forget that the election is over a year away, and a viable candidate has plenty of time to surface before then. What the GOP does risk is, in all of their ideological differences, running another candidate equivalent to John McCain. By that, I mean an unelectable candidate that cannot match up with President Obama in charisma and sheer campaigning ability.

If a candidate like Rick Perry is nominated, then it remains to be seen if the moderate and independent citizens of the U.S. will cast their votes for a radically conservative candidate or remain supportive of what they know: mediocracy and status quo.

In the face of such polarizing candidates like Perry and Bachmann, it is much more of a gamble for the Republican party to nominate them, because it is hard to gauge how voters will react to them. It remains an issue of alternatives at this point.

President Obama has had a pretty dismal performance as president. While this has not been entirely his doing because of the even more alarming performance of Congress, most problems that have occurred during his administration will be pinned on him.

Rasmussen recently (Aug. 17) stated that only “15 percent of

likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction,” while “[e]ighty percent (80%) of voters say the country is heading down the wrong track.” The statistics do not bode well for President Obama, but those statistics may not bode well for the country where the other alternative is frighteningly far from the center.

Michael Dearman is a sophomore majoring in philosophy, political science, and English. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].