The Great Republican Smackdown of 2012 is already gearing up!  Non-Republicans might be very amused to hear this, but the big fight shaping up is between two truly unlikely individuals: Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.

Each is stridently conservative, each is widely regarded as a loser, and each is being talked up for president in 2012.  (You can read about Palin's delusional advocates here and Gingrich's delusional advocates here.)

Now, in the first shot across the bow, Gingrich is smacking down Palin's viability…

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is batting down the hype that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin heads into 2012 as the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.

Palin energized the Republican base after GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) tapped her as his running mate and she has tried to preserve her high public profile since Election Day.

But Gingrich, an architect of the Republican revolution of 1994, took Palin down a notch, asserting that she would not become the party’s leader, as some have predicted.

“I think that she is going to be a significant player,” said Gingrich during an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation”. “But she’s going to be one of 20 or 30 significant players. She’s not going to be the de facto leader.”

Meanwhile, we can only presume that Gingrich is thinking of himself as that de facto leader.  At least if he reads Bob Novak's column.

Stay tuned for more updates on who will claim the prize of serving as 2012's Barry Goldwater.