Let the 2012 race begin - Republicans vie to unseat Obama

Washington - Four years ago, politicians in the United States were practically falling over each other for a chance to claim the country’s top job from the outgoing and unpopular president George W Bush.

By February 2007, the Democratic Party race was shaping up nicely between former first lady Hillary Clinton and a young senator, Barack Obama, an outsider who trailed in early polling. Republicans John McCain - who would eventually capture his party’s nomination - Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney were publicly testing the waters for the conservative party’s nomination.

The race for 2012, a chance to make Obama a one-term president, has started off much more quietly on the Republican side. This despite Obama’s approval ratings among voters sitting below 50%. Tim Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota, has become the first major Republican candidate to take the plunge, announcing in a Facebook video Monday the formation of an exploratory committee - the first formal step toward a presidential run. The late start this year comes in a Republican field that could get extremely crowded, with the winner of a series of state primaries securing the party’s nomination to face Obama in the general election. More than a dozen politicians are considering entering the race. Yet some of the biggest Republican names remain reluctant to state their intentions.

Sarah Palin, the populist firebrand who was Mc- Cain’s running mate in 2008, has legions of passionate supporters but remains coy about whether she will make a run for president. The same goes for Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, Baptist minister and popular social conservative who came in third to McCain in 2008 and now has his own television talk show. Other contenders include: Governors Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi; Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor and until recently Obama’s ambassador to China; former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum; and Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman and darling of the populist Tea Party movement. Despite much public optimism about their chances in 2012, the slow start could mark a sign that many conservatives are unsure of just how vulnerable Obama really is in 2012.

“I think it would be foolish for anybody on the Republican or conservative side to think that it’s going to be easy to make President Obama a one-term president,” said Roger Stockton, co- founder of a political-action committee in Nevada that identifies with the Tea Party movement.

This year has begun with signs that the economy may be coming out of its slump. The unemployment rate - possibly the most important economic measure in any presidential race - has fallen from 9.8% in November to 8.9% in February. Obama had a series of legislative successes in December, including a bipartisan tax cut, a nuclear-arms treaty with Russia and ending a ban on gays serving openly in the military.

Those victories and the improving economy helped Obama’s approval rating rise above 50% in January, though it has fallen back slightly since.