Dude, who called this ticket from day one? From day one.

Peterson believes that the GOP needs a strong candidate to go up against President Obama. The president, he believes, is “middle management . . . a president, not a leader, who is not what this country was looking for, but just what it was hoping for, when he ran.” And about the veep? “His back-up guy, Biden? My God.”

He thinks Chris Christie, the Republican governor of New Jersey, should be the frontrunner for the GOP ticket. “He could be good. People are starving for that Reagan-type leadership,” Peterson says. Put someone like Christie up, “not someone from the same, old crowd,” and Republicans will have a real shot, he adds. Much better than John McCain’s chances in 2008: “Jesus Christ could have run as a Republican and he couldn’t have won.”

“Sarah Palin, she’s been ridiculed by the press, but she has more experience than the dim bulb we got now,” Peterson says of the former Alaskan governor. What about Mike Huckabee, another Southern man? Peterson is not so sure. He says Huckabee’s show on Fox News has become boring. “He was like a new fish in the goldfish bowl: Everyone was excited about the different-colored fish. And I like ol’ Huck, but he ended up running around in the same circles.”

Loves Christie, likes Palin, not so high on Huckabee: Is Dale Peterson a Hot Air reader?

I encourage you to read the whole piece, as there’s a too-good-to-check surprise buried at the very end. In the meantime, here’s Christie from today’s Cavuto once again insisting that he won’t run for president, partly because he doesn’t have enough experience yet. And yes — rest assured, Cavuto does offer the obvious counterargument to that point. Exit question via Dave Weigel: If not “Christie for president,” what about “Christie for vice president”? CC seems dim on that idea too, but given the right candidate at the top of the ticket, he’d be in heavy demand as a gateway to winning votes in the northeast. That fits the bill for Huck or Palin, who can already count on southern support, but could Romney or Mitch Daniels really afford to pick someone who’s not from the south? Hmmm.