All talk from the Back 40

ARE YOU  ready to ring in a new year with the thought of a four-year presidential campaign? .  The first bloody signs of it happening is the reemergence from the back 40  of at least three Republican losing candidates as radio talk-show hosts in 2009.  It used to be that the losers shared little political wealth after their quests for the Oval Office were denied by the voters.  Al Gore settled for a Nobel Prize for his environmental efforts; Jimmy Carter spent a lot of time building houses for the poor; Gerald Ford was happy to play golf.  But talk-show opportunities today offer boundless ways to convince the voters that the hosts are keenly aware of the Republic's deficiencies and would nicely fill out the top of their party's presidential ticket. Sean Hannity, the right-wing icon who talks a lot on  Fox News,  calls it  "conservatism in exile."

So as George Bush is being repatriated to his native ranch in Texas,  here is the old lineup of falling stars that will be soaring into the ether in 2009:

Fred Thompson will succeed Bill O'Reilly's radio show in March.  He will cover a lot of distance in the four-year run-up to 2012.  Confounding the media that sized him up as a formidable presidential candidate in 2008,  Thompson emerged more as a sleep-deprived politician  and netted an ever-so-silent o.5 pct. of the Republican vote.  

Mike Huckabee will be back, too.  Already visible with a Fox TV show(sufficiently after church,  at 11 p.m. Sundays)  Huckabee will begin a a radio talk show on ABC in January.  He has given every indication that he is an unannounced candadate for the presidency in 2012. Wanna predict what he'll be talking about?

Rudy Giuliani, who had been in the loop as a replacement for O'Reilly's radio show, was shut out, but is still shopping around for a radio spot.  Rudy never knows when to stop talking and was off the reservation a number of times during the campaign.  No one conceived of a worse campaign strategy  as he idled in Florida and elsewhere waiting for lightning to ignite his chances.  

Get out your delegate counters. And leave some space for other winner-take-all talkers.  Or you can simply turn off the radio and wait for the movie.   It couldn't hurt.