If the grassroots uprising that is rendering the 2010 election cycle entirely unpredictable continues into the 2012 presidential season, we may be in for even more surprises than normal.

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Autumn is upon us and with it has come the growing anticipation of the midterm elections that will arrive in just six weeks. But regardless of whether January brings the arrival of Speaker of the House John Boehner or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the jockeying for political rank is just getting started. No sooner will Chris Matthews - incoherent from 12 hours straight of midterm election coverage - be dragged from the MSNBC studios than America’s most popular reality show will get started. The 2012 presidential race will be underway.

As unhappiness with the Obama regime has grown and conservatives have cast about for potential leaders, several names have already come to the fore on the Republican side: Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee are among the usual suspects.

In the invisible pre-primaries, other figures who previously lacked widespread name recognition have started to generate regular buzz as well: Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, South Dakota Senator John Thune, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty among others.

Then, of course, there are the fantasy candidates. Don’t hold your breath if you think this is the year you’re finally going to get a chance to pull the lever for David Petraeus, Dick Cheney or Chris Christie.

Even at the hyper-analyzed presidential level, however, there are always campaign arrhythmias. In 2007, Huckabee was an obscure southern governor with an evangelist’s mien and a professional stand-up’s comic timing. By 2008, that combination had handed him victory in the Iowa Caucuses and an impressive base in Dixie and the Midwest. Four years earlier, Howard Dean - governor of a state that is smaller than 21 American cities - was a hair’s breadth away from winning the Democratic presidential nomination after a career of complete national anonymity.

If the grassroots uprising that is rendering the 2010 election cycle entirely unpredictable continues into the 2012 presidential season, we may be in for even more surprises than normal. Among the potential dark-horse candidates:

John Bolton - The mustachioed diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 2005 and 2006 has impeccable conservative credentials:  positions in the last three Republican presidential administrations; a long-time affiliation with the American Enterprise Institute; he even proudly touts his high school admiration for Barry Goldwater. Bolton’s wheelhouse is foreign policy, which may take a back seat to domestic concerns in the upcoming election. As an uber-hawk who eschews the pretensions of nation building, however, he could be a powerful antidote to the millenarian dreaming of Obama abroad. And even a failed candidacy could land him on the short list to be the next Secretary of State.

Jim DeMint - While Sarah Palin has enjoyed a de facto coronation as head of the Tea Party movement at the hands of the mainstream media, Jim DeMint - the junior senator from South Carolina - has been an arguably greater institutional force for the revival of limited government conservatism in the GOP. A strict believer in the three conservative pillars of free markets, traditional values and a strong national defense, the soft-spoken DeMint’s stewardship of the Senate Conservatives Fund - which has explicitly challenged the Republican establishment when it backs insufficiently conservative candidates - has been the most dynamic factor in the 2010 election cycle thus far. While he denies any interest in the White House, DeMint could have a fervent Tea Party army at his back were he to change his mind.

Mike Pence - The silver-haired congressman from Indiana (a former talk radio host) has spent a decade methodically positioning himself as one of the foremost voices of conservative conscience in the house. A riveting speaker (as his broadcasting background might suggest) who chairs the House Republican Conference, Pence has both the resume and the intangibles of a viable presidential candidate. Even that, however, may not be enough to propel a presidential candidacy from the House of Representatives. Only once in the nation’s history has a sitting congressman been elected president (James Garfield in 1880).

Marco Rubio - If the hype behind Rubio - the young, charismatic, articulate former Speaker of the Florida House now aiming for the Sunshine State’s open U.S. Senate seat - is to be believed, he’s the Republican Obama. That’s already given rise to the idea that he could marshal the same sort of meteoric rise to the White House. But even Obama had four years between arriving on Capitol Hill and making the short trip down to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Rubio would literally have to start running for president before he took his oath of office. That makes the odds long, but don’t be surprised to see this son of Cuban immigrants on the short list when it comes time to pick a vice presidential nominee in 2012.

And finally… 

Hillary Clinton - The ultimate X factor in the 2012 race. With President Obama scraping bottom at the polls and Democrats in congress likely to suffer a wipeout in November, the left’s political ascendancy has cratered with breathtaking speed. If, as beltway conventional wisdom suggests, Obama rebounds a la Reagan or Clinton in the closing of his first term, Clinton likely stays at the State Department or searches for greener pastures outside of government. But what if Obama’s downward trajectory proceeds unbroken? What if the nation suffers a second round of recession or a crippling terrorist attack? What if both? Then the doomsday scenario may unfold:  Four years after fighting the most divisive presidential contest in its history … the Democratic Party relitigates the matter.