PP already looking to 2012.

The new PP campaign with the slogan 'Con Rajoy es posible', copied from IU's 'con IU es posible', has proven a total disaster for the party in a similar way to the infamous Tory campaing in the UK under Michael Howard, the 'are you thinking what we are thinking?' 2005 campaign.
Flickr users have been creating 'alternative' slogans for the campaign and the joke doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon. You can find them in http://www.flickr.com/photos/marianorajoi/

Of all the 'alternative' slogans in Flickr however there is one that is worrying Rajoy and his campaign team. It is the one with Esperanza Aguirre, the main contender to replace Rajoy if PP loses the election, laughing behind Rajoy and the slogan 'Espe 2012, with Rajoy it is possible'.

But that isn't the only reference to Rajoy's future, or lack of it, in the leadership of the party. Newspapers across the country gave big headlines to the announcement that Rodrigo Rato, another main contender in the race for the leadership, has been hired as senior executive to Europe and Latin Amercia by the prestigious investment bank Lazard. All political analysts were yesterday debating if this was the end of Rato's political career.

Many in PP are feeling relieved that Rato is out of the way thus protecting Rajoy's leadership. But the reality is that journalists are finding the battle for the leadership more interesting than whatever PP got to offer this time around, which isn't much anyway. Rajoy wasn't able to bring in Rato as part of his team, unlike Zapatero's ability to bring in Bono and Solbes, highlighting even further that he got no team to match up Zapatero's in March. The media is smellling blood already and we are still four months away from election day!