Even eight years ago, Santorum seemed like a bad joke

I was just googling around to find some of the old threads on Santorum in which I participated and was amused to come up with one I started in July 2004 headed "Does the Republican Party have any rising stars?"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2097619&mesg_id=2097619

I was thinking about Barack Obama . . . and looking at the lineup someone posted of speakers at the Republican convention . . . and it suddenly occurred to me that I couldn't think of a single prominent Republican under the age of 50. Most of the familiar names were born in the 40's -- Frist (1952) was the youngest I could find.

Well, there's Rick Santorum (1958), but he's not so much prominent as he is a bad joke.

So my question is . . . are there any up-and-coming Republicans (age 35-45, say) that I just don't know about? Governors, big-city mayors, junior Senators, anything? And if there are, could any of them even begin to pass as centrists?

I'm interested in the answers. It could say a lot about where this country might be eight years from now.

It's fun to read the suggestions various people made in light of current events (Michael Steele! Bobby Jindal! Eric Cantor!) -- but it also shows that the current thinness of the GOP field was already in the cards eight years ago.