Townhall reader Mark Hallyburton had the ingenious idea to try to preemptively recruit supporters for a Peyton Manning 2012 presidential campaign — so, when Peyton declares, he’ll already have a potential donor list at his disposal. To that end, Hallyburton created a website, “Peyton for President,” and started the Twitter hashtag #peyton4pres.

“This is not a joke,” the website declares. “This is a plea: America, stand up and do something historic.”

Hallyburton’s reasoning is compelling: “Conservatives need a champion. Peyton Manning needs a job,” but, as Townhall’s Elisabeth Meinecke writes, his dream of Peyton taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will probably go unfulfilled:

Sadly, I think Manning will find a job way before conservatives find their champion. That being said, Peyton’s had a history of contributing to Republicans (George Bush, Fred Thompson, Richard Lugar, and Bob Corker), so it’s probably a more logical fit than many other A-list athletes would be. …

While the odds of something like this happening are about as good as the Colts going undefeated next year or Paris Hilton piloting a space ship, the concept of athletes jumping from sports to politics is a road that’s been traveled several times before. Unfortunately, this is one late-game comeback Peyton probably can’t swing, and likely doesn’t want to.

2016, anyone?

Still, so far, the “Peyton for President” campaign has had its fair share of success. The site has been live for just two days and Hallyburton says he’s received more than 1,000 e-mail addresses.

Manning’s next move is of interest to everybody from Mark Hallyburton to Alec Baldwin. Delegate math aside, if Manning decided to run for the GOP nomination, it’d wake up sleepy Republicans who’ve been dissatisfied with their choices from Day One and annoy liberals who like to claim all cultural icons for themselves. We can dream.