Why on earth would Palin run? She's making obscene amounts of money for giving the same speech over and over and has expressed basically no interest in actually governing anything. At best the presidency would mean 4 years off of the lucrative speaking circuit for her, at worst it could derail her gravy train.
Glenn Beck, for all his bombast, doesn't appear interested in actually running for office. And why would he? He's the most successful and visible member of his profession (which I'll politely define as "pundit"), with a national platform to spout whatever he wants and basically no requirements to actually deliver on anything. Why ruin a good thing?
I assume Romney will run yet again, and if nobody interesting runs he'll have a shot. His only downside on a national stage is being Mormon, and his only upside is good hair.
Jindal was sort of being set up as a Republican Obama, but the only speeches I've seen from him were brutally bad. No idea if he's spent the off season training, but I haven't been impressed so far. He'll have a tough time as a "ethnic" Republican in the primaries in any case, doubt he could pull it off in a tea party climate but he might surprise me.
Pawlenty is apparently in the running and seems to be a more or less prototypical Republican. He's towed (toed? toad?) the party line for the most part and I don't know of any scandals that'd bother the Republican base. So his main problem just seems to be a lack of immediate name recognition in a field that is dominated by celebrities.
There'll be some throwbacks in the running like Newt Gingrich early on, if he can capitalize on... nostalgia?... he could make a showing of it. He's been out of actual politics long enough for his past sins to have been mostly forgotten, and can pull out the "back to the good old days" card. I suspect he (or someone like him) will make a good early showing then fade.
... and now I'll get to look back in a couple years and laugh at how completely wrong I was in this post.
