The longer Republicans wait for an "exciting" candidate, the worse off they'll be.

The problem for Pawlenty and Romney and the other left-behind candidates is that it now becomes their dreary task to prove that they are really making Republican voters excited. Defeating Obama should excite conservatives enough, but while dislike for the current president is a strong motivator, it's not enough. Obama is not George H.W. Bush: He's a talented campaigner who will have a lot of money. This will cause each of the existing candidates to make claims for audience enthusiasm that will be overblown. Hillary Clinton tried to do this for a while when Obama was drawing crowds 10 times as large as hers. It did not make her campaign look formidable.

Once a nominee is chosen, it will be the party's job to prove that everyone is enthusiastic. That job will be harder, argue some Republicans, the longer the "savior candidate" story line continues. This ripple leads all the way to the vice presidential pick, and it can cause real havoc. A nominee who is not perceived to excite the base looks for that quality in a vice presidential pick. John McCain picked Sarah Palin to fit that bill. Bob Dole picked Jack Kemp. They were exciting in the way a downed power line can be. Lots of the energy those VP candidates contributed came in the form of chaos.

As the 1992 presidential race proved, a lot of things can happen to prove the fearful party wise men wrong. Perhaps the lesson for Republicans is that the first thing to do is to stop waiting for magic to arrive and start looking for it in the candidates already running.

Clarification, May 24, 2011: This article originally cited a Quinnipiac University poll, but the poll was among all voters, not Republican voters, which is a nearly useless measurement in a story about a party nominating fight. (Return to the modified sentence.)

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