Is ‘12ers’ well-established alias for 2012 Presidential candidate?

I puzzled over the first line of the article of December 9’s Time magazine titled "Des Moines Dust-Up", which reads;

'12ers (minus Huntsman) square-off at Drake University for ABC News/Yahoo! News/WOI-TV/Des Moines Register/Iowa GOP debate from 9 - 11 pm ET.

As it didn’t occur to me that 12ers means 2012 Presidential candidates (until I reasoned it out by the context), I searched for definitions of 12ers on Google, and found that only Wikipedia provides the following definition:

‘12"ers’ is a 1987/1988 remix album released by Phil Collins. The album contains six tracks from his 1985 hit album, No Jacket required, remixed.....

Is 12ers widely-accepted as the word representing for 2012 presidential candidates? Do Americans immediately associate 12ers with Presidential candidates, not Phil Collins’ album?

Is this word automatically renewed every 4 years as 04ers, 08ers, 16ers, 20ers, and n＋4ers without public consensus?

Solution 1:

12ers may not be simply Time-speak, as Prof. Lawler notes, but Washington-speak in general.

I searched for 08ers on time.com, and turned up this snippet:

The AP continues its questions to the WH ’08ers with, “What time is ‘sleeping in?’”

The article goes on to mention Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, et al., so apparently it was very early in the 2008 campaign.

Following Time's reference to its source in the National Journal, I repeated the 08ers search there, and found a number of links referencing the 2008 campaign.

Repeating the search with 04ers, however, turned up nothing, so either this construction originated with 08ers, or the National Journal's searchable archives don't go back that far.

Addendum: Searching for 12ers on NationalJournal.com turned up nothing. Perhaps they dropped the term after Time coopted it?

Solution 2:

No, it appears to be just Time-speak.

Perhaps it's formed by analogy with Birthers,

'Republicans who refuse to believe Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.'

12ers might therefore mean

'Republicans who refuse to allow Barack Obama to run unopposed in 2012.'

Solution 3:

Cultural references have to start somewhere. Sounds like Time is trying to institute one.