kane

I think it depends on how things are going in 3 years. If Obama is doing well and the stimulus plan works and things are looking good, it won't matter who they nominate. They will likely lose more seats in the house and senate and they will probably run out some second tier candidate who will get crushed by Obama. It is very difficult to beat an incumbent president. If that president is popular and doing well, it is nearly impossible.

If things aren't going well and the stimulus plan doesn't seem to be working then they might break out the top candidates and make a run at him. Palin? I think she sealed her fate with her VP run. She gets the conservative base fired up, but she scares a lot of the independents and she already is painted as an idiot. It is very difficult to overcome that. Jindal? I don't know much about him other than they say he is a rising star in the party. If he is going to make a run he will have to do a whole hell of a lot better than he did last night because last night he came off kind of like that half baked guy who works at the local dime store, not as someone you want running the country.

The republican party is divided right now and their basic strategy seems to be "wait for Obama to fail". If he does fail they can swoop in and take advantage of that. If he doesn't fail it will make them look terrible and their party will collapse even further. The republicans right now are kind of like the democrats were in the mid 90's. They don't have a lot of direction, there is infighting and power struggles in the party and they don't seem to have much of a plan. Add in the new census and the redistricting to follow that will be overseen by the democrats and it might be a very long time before the republicans get back into power.