RALEIGH – In the past week, the shape of the 2012 presidential race has become much clearer.

Mike Huckabee is out. Donald Trump is out, though he was never really in the political field (his “campaign” was a publicity stunt). As of yesterday, Mitch Daniels is out. And Newt Gingrich is out of his mind, politically speaking.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has begun the process of reconstituting the organization that produced his historic 2008 campaign. He never really stopped being a politician, of course. No president does. But you can tell in his rhetoric, and increasingly in his travel schedule, that 2012 beckons.

Obama brings valuable assets into the race. In 2008, his team put a number of formerly Republican-leaning states in play – including Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina – by producing a spectacular turnout of the Democratic base and wooing moderate independents with an optimistic message. The turnout effort will be back, sustained by new social-media tools and what will be a massive fundraising effort.

To swing voters, however, the president is no longer a fuzzy image they can resolve in their own minds to be whatever they like. He now has a record. Some may like it. But most of these voters, who swung in 2008 on pocketbook issues, don’t like Obama’s performance on the economy.

The good news for Obama is that he doesn’t need all his prior voters to secure reelection. He won in 2008 with votes to spare. Furthermore, just because most swing voters are disappointed with persistently high unemployment and painfully high gas prices doesn’t mean that they will automatically vote for his opponent, regardless of who that is. Some may not vote at all.

For the Republicans to defeat Obama, they will need a candidate who can secure and turn out the GOP base as well as appeal to independent voters. Who are those independents? The latest Pew Research Center voter typology divides them into three groups:

• Libertarians. At about 10 percent of the electorate, these voters favor low taxes, limited government, consumer choice, and social tolerance. They are divided on foreign-policy matters. Libertarian voters usually vote Republican, but it’s the intensity that matters. Their support for McCain was tepid.

• Disaffected. At 11 percent of the electorate, these voters have also leaned Republican in the past but they have very different views from the Libertarians. They are skeptical of both government and business, hold traditionalist views on social and cultural issues, and tend to be pessimistic while Libertarians tends towards optimism.

• Post-Moderns. At 14 percent of the electorate, Post-Modern voters lean Democratic and have an eclectic mixture of views. In some ways, they are the mirror image of the Disaffected – they are both pro-government and pro-business, though they have concerns about the effectiveness and affordability of entitlement programs. They are socially liberal and dovish on foreign policy.

In the Pew Center typology, the Republican base is smaller than the Democratic base, meaning that GOP candidates are more reliant on independent votes to achieve victory. In 2008, McCain fell far short. Obama won the vast majority of Post-Moderns, a sizable number of Disaffecteds angry with Bush’s economic policies, and some Libertarians who disliked McCain and hoped Obama was something that, it turned out, he was not.

In 2012, it seems clear to me now that the Republicans will nominate one of three options, all former or current governors: Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, or Rick Perry. Yes, there are other Republicans in the field. In my opinion, they are either too inexperienced or too unsalable to independents to be viable presidential contenders, and I suspect most GOP primary voters will agree.

All three have obstacles to overcome. Romney signed a health care bill in Massachusetts that prefigured ObamaCare in ways that GOP voters detest. Pawlenty, who will formally announce his candidacy on Monday, flirted with cap-and-trade extremism on climate change in Minnesota. And Perry, who has yet to declare his intent to enter the presidential race, is another governor from Texas who speaks with a Southern twang.

The demand for that brand is cooled a bit.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.