DES MOINES, Iowa (AFP) — Republicans appear to be gearing up for the 2012 presidential race before Barack Obama has even moved into the White House.
Two high-profile Republicans have scheduled campaign-like stops in Iowa next week as party leaders are still trying to recover from devastating losses to Democrats in the November 4 election.
More potential contenders are expected to make the pilgrimage to Iowa in the coming months as the election cycle moves into overdrive.
The first scheduled to arrive is Mike Huckabee. The former Arkansas governor, who won Iowa's Republican caucus but lost his party's nomination to John McCain, will host two book signing events in the state on November 20.
The second is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a 37-year-old Indian American who is considered a rising star within the Republican Party. He will visit Iowa two days after Huckabee and speak at several fundraising events.
While both men deny they are preparing a bid for the 2012 Republican nomination for the presidency, political observers say the visits are strategically planned.
"Politicians NEVER -- we can't stress this enough -- go to Iowa accidentally. They know exactly what a trip to Iowa means," Washington Post political blogger Chris Cillizza wrote recently.
Iowa holds the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, which is seen as the first major stepping stone toward winning the Republican or Democratic presidential nomination.
And Iowa voters take their vetting role very seriously: they expect to be able to quiz candidates over coffee in diners and dining rooms and won't be satisfied with a stump speech.
"I think they're just kind of feeling their way around, testing the waters and seeing how things go to get acquainted with people they'll have to get acquainted with three years from now," said Jan van Lohuizen, a Republican consultant who handled polling for President George W. Bush's reelection campaign in 2004.
Speculation that Republicans were already eyeing the 2012 race grew even before Obama's historic win, as vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin campaigned heavily in Iowa even though some polls showed the Democrat ahead there by as much as 17 points.
McCain's Iowa campaign staff dismissed the speculation of Palin's intentions, saying the Alaska governor was focused entirely on the 2008 race.
Other politicians have tried to derail the speculation, too.
"One of the worst things that can happen to the Republican Party in our effort to rebuild is for a bunch of people to start running for president," Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour told Politico when asked if he would run in 2012.
"Anybody harboring that ambition needs to squelch it until after 2010.... Anybody out there running for president is undercutting what's important. You do this against your own interest."
Officially, Huckabee has said 2012 is too far away to announce a run. Even so, supporters on a campaign e-mail list from his suspended 2008 campaign still regularly receive correspondence.
Jindal has said he is focused on being governor of his state, not president of the United States, and on Tuesday told local reporters he "politely declined" to be vetted by John McCain's campaign as a potential vice presidential pick because "we still have a lot more work to do" in Louisiana.
"People are looking, probably, for more than there is," said Bryan English, a spokesman for the Iowa Family Policy Center, a conservative non-profit group sponsoring one of Jindal's stops next week.
"He is a friend of the family and we, obviously, have friends in common so it was just an obvious fit and we're just thrilled he accepted."
Oftentimes, potential presidential candidates don't begin to make appearances in Iowa until about two years before the race, said Bruce Gronbeck, director of the University of Iowa's Center for Media Studies and Political Culture.
It's likely that the Iowa visits are, in part, a way for Republican Party candidates to begin to reconnect with voters and draw support from their base as well as from independent voters, Gronbeck said.
"It seems to me if anybody is actually starting to poke around this early, it means they really want to hear the voices of the citizenry again," Gronbeck said.
"It's not simply just to position themselves for 2012, but also to tell the party how it should be shaping itself politically."
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