It's Christmas Eve, so let's treat ourselves to something conservative political junkies enjoy: handicapping the 2012 Republican field.
On the Fox News Special Report this evening, panelists Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer both singled out Mitch Daniels as a man to watch. Hayes identifed the Indiana gov as perhaps the true Tea Party candidate—someone willing to speak the hard truths about the need for entitlement reform. Krauthammer counter-intuitively found Daniels' lack of charisma appealing—as an antidote to our overdose of hope-and-change.
View video after the jump.
Watch Stephen and Charles make the case for Mitch.
Other panel observations:
A.B. Stoddard: "the people who really know how these primaries work and really understand [Palin] better than we might at his table are starting to convince me that she's not going to run."
Juan Williams: "If I was picking the field right now, the person that I would watch is former Governor Mike Huckabee."
Note: no one expressed enthusiasm for Mitt Romney, though Hayes sized up the field as "Mitt Romney and then everybody else."
