Missing: Republicans. Must be willing to declare candidacy for president of the United States. Missed terribly. Last seen dancing with the Tea Party movement.

What's going on? Usually, by now in the "campaign cycle" (shortly after the midterm elections), at least a handful of candidates have declared their intention to run for president to much fanfare. But for the Republicans this time around, nobody is ready to announce. They're not even close.

Yes, of course, there are names being floated around: Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Haley Barbour and – needless to say – Sarah "the Barracuda" Palin. But nobody seems to be in a rush to declare their candidacies or even signal an intention to run.

"What's happening now has the feel of a huge workforce slowdown," says my friend and former colleague Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist closely aligned with Mitt Romney.

On its face, this is surprising. Usually, the press is already in a fevered frenzy about the early declared candidates, their publications awash with polls and pontification on the ongoing electoral "horse-race". But, much to the Washington press corps' chagrin, the Republicans seem to have come down with a pronounced case of cold feet. Sure, a few are racking up frequent flier miles travelling to New Hampshire and Iowa, those critical first states in the primary calendar, but nobody has had the guts to come out and declare a candidacy.

Part of this phenomenon is overall election timing. Unnoticed by many except the most astute Republican strategists, the all-important early primary caucuses and elections in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada have been pushed back a month from January to February of 2012.

There is also a great deal of uncertainty around new Republican rules that govern the primaries. Beginning in March of 2012, after the traditional first four state primaries above, the results of the states' votes in primary contests will no longer be "winner takes all". In other words, states will have to invent their own versions of proportional representation and give candidates appropriate shares of the vote.

Confused yet? The Republican candidates certainly are.

What it means in a practical sense is that it will be much harder, this time around, for one candidate to surge into the lead early in the process. You can count on a protracted, tense and controversial Republican primary season as candidates fight to the bitter end, not unlike Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008, who battled all the way to the conclusion of the primary season.

That fight in itself is a lesson to Republicans considering candidacies for the presidency. "There's a feeling that everything just dragged on too long last time," says Madden. But the real roots of the candidates' delay in announcing go deeper.

They speak to a palpable uncertainty among candidates about two important factors. First, how to beat the presumed frontrunner, Sarah Palin. And second, how to brand themselves in a political world dominated by a vocal Tea Party minority.

Palin is in no rush to declare. She knows that, unlike the others in the "phony race", she has the advantage of massive name recognition and a tremendous "base" buoyed by her Facebook and Twitter engagements, her Fox News contract and her "reality" shows like the recent "Sarah Palin's Alaska", a sickly sweet documentary aired recently about the former governor and her family. The Palin factor is causing consternation among other likely candidates, who are understandably reluctant to get out ahead of a potential locomotive without first knowing how to apply the brakes.

The second, more important, dynamic speaks to the uncertainty of the Tea Party's role in these primary contests. One thing is clear: the movement is unlikely to stay silent. And the candidates understand that even if they can't win the endorsement of the fringe, they must at least secure a tacit truce. In other words, the Tea Party may (and likely will) endorse Sarah Palin, but Mitt Romney can remain a viable opponent if he avoids drawing their ire.

That's a difficult task, and one that is further complicated by the fact that Republican candidates will have to square rallying extremist Tea Party support with tacking back to the middle of the political spectrum in a general election likely dominated by a president who will have carefully built his moderate credentials for the preceding two years (starting with his recent tax cut deal).

So, the Republicans continue to sit and wait, hoping for a sign from Palin-land (which is content to keep them waiting), and wringing their hands at the impossible task before them of placating the Tea Party while keeping hold of the lifeline back to the centre. The waiting game is bound to end sooner or later (likely early next year), after which some of the contours of this debate will come into focus. But for now, as George Bush would say, it's nothing but "fuzzy math".