Ben Linus to become the next Jacob by CDN Lost Fan

With all this talk of jacob replacements whose to say ben linus doesn't replace him?

1) Jacob died of Ben's hand thus being the ultimate shame of the way Jacob views the human race.
2) Is Ben not capable of blindly testing people with disregard of the outcome as seen with Locke numerous times and taunting the Widmore's people to the point that they killed Alex in which he really showed in my opinion little remorse for that Smokie really had to scare out of him.
3)Ben has not played much of a role since the murder of Jacob he's kind of been a character waiting in the background until we seen this week when he actually shows some backbone and speaks of John Locke and shows remorse for once of his own accord.
4) Lastly we do not see his name on the list of candidates because technically he likely died or was altered by being put in the fountain in the temple in 1977 when Sayid shot him, thus making him more of Jacobs second in command then he may think this whole time. Which begs the question is that list really for Jacobs replacement or a failsafe for who Jacob would like to see fill MIB's shoes out of the 815 survivors???

All this stemmed from me thinking hey what the heck happend to Ben's character. I think the writers may be letting us forget about him for awhile to only spring this or some other ridiculous plot involving Ben on us in the near future.

Whattya think completely utterly out to lunch or a possible theory?