AND FYI every time I post it as MS. Someone like you comes along and says what has Micro Soft got to do with it. So I am at the mercy of the SAPPs no matter what I do.
Posted on 10/11/2005 4:27:01 AM PDT by WKB
President Barbour?
Just a few months ago, the notion of Mississippi's governor running for president would have seemed absurd.
Haley Barbour, a Reagan White House aide turned lobbyist, was too much of a Washington insider to be a credible candidate, the reasoning went. With his rich accent -- described in various places as "honeyed" and "syrupy" -- and beefy features, he was also too Southern, too much of a good ol' boy.
And given his troubles in Mississippi with cutting Medicaid and funding education, it wasn't assured he'd win re-election in 2007, much less be presidential material.
Then Hurricane Katrina happened.
While the White House struggled and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco seemed overwhelmed, Barbour supplied steady leadership and emerged from the crisis with a burnished national reputation.
Now, Barbour is routinely mentioned by political pundits as a likely candidate for the Republican nomination.
"Katrina has made the governor a star in his state," wrote Stuart Rothenberg in Roll Call, the Washington paper for government insiders, "and it may well have enhanced Barbour's appeal nationally, giving him the kind of credentials that a future presidential candidate would love to have."
Politicalderby.com, a Web site dedicated to handicapping the field, puts Barbour third among potential GOP candidates, behind only Virginia Sen. George Allen and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and ahead of other Republican luminaries like former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain.
In an Internet straw poll of more than 18,000 conducted by Patrick Ruffini, a Republican blogger and pollster, Barbour drew 6 percent of the vote in September, finishing in the top half in a field of 12 possible candidates. (Giuliani was the big winner, with 33 percent of the vote.)
The speculation, of course, is largely premature, confined mostly to chatter among political junkies. Barbour himself has shrugged off the talk, saying he's focusing himself on the rebuilding of his ravaged state.
But good buzz can help prime the pump for the essential early fund-raising. Meanwhile, numerous Republican politicians are already making repeat trips to the bellwether states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Barbour's friends and associates in Washington and Mississippi enthusiastically endorse his candidacy.
"I've always agitated him to consider it," said Ed Rogers, a longtime friend and co-founder of their lobbying firm, Barbour Griffith & Rogers, LLC.
"I would love to see him run. I think Haley Barbour would be excellent at anything he did."
Frank Farenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association and, like Barbour, a past chair of the Republican National Committee, said Barbour would make a formidable candidate.
"Clearly, he's got the leadership skills, he's got articulation, he understands the process, he understands how you win nominations," Farenkopf said.
As a governor, Barbour would have a distinct advantage over candidates who are senators and don't have executive branch experience, Farenkopf said.
"There's got to be a reason that there hasn't been a senator elected president since 1960," he said.
Mississippi's Republicans would miss Barbour, but he would go to Washington with their blessing, said Jim Herring, chairman of the state party.
"I think we'd be honored and happy if he were to do it," Herring said.
For all the reasons he could run, there are as many why he wouldn't.
Barbour's response to Katrina makes his candidacy plausible, Rogers said, but the enormous task of rebuilding the coast would make it hard for him to walk away from Mississippi.
There's also the question of Barbour's performance in Mississippi prior to Katrina.
His efforts to cut the state's funding of education and health care left him badly bruised.
According to a SurveyUSA poll of 600 adults in May, 55 percent disapproved of how he was running the state and only 37 percent approved.
(Those numbers essentially reversed in a post-Katrina September poll, with 58 percent now approving of Barbour's performance.)
"Our thought was that his handling of Medicaid and education were tremendously bad for the state and that he could be defeated (in 2007)," said former congressman Wayne Dowdy, who is now chairman of the state Democratic Party.
While Dowdy gives Barbour good marks for his handling of the Katrina aftermath, he said Barbour has disappointed many who once supported him.
"When he was elected, he got the votes of a lot of poor, white, rural Mississippians, and they were jolted when they saw what the candidate they voted for was doing to Medicaid and education," he said.
Perhaps the most serious obstacle to a Barbour candidacy is the quirky Mississippi electoral calendar that elects governors in odd years.
To mount a serious presidential campaign, Barbour would have to be campaigning and fund-raising in Iowa and New Hampshire through the fall of 2007, when he also would have to be running for re-election in Mississippi, said Charlie Cook, editor of the Washington-based Cook Political Report.
"Even if you're Haley Barbour, you're bound by the laws of physics and people can't be in two places at once," Cook said.
Cook acknowledges that Barbour's star has climbed since Katrina, but "people aren't looking at logistics: running and raising 20, 30, 40 million dollars right off the bat. I just don't know how practical it is for Haley Barbour to run for president unless he doesn't run for re-election."
It would be unlikely for Barbour to abandon re-election, given that the presidency would be still be a long shot, Cook said.
"Sometime the calendar just works against you," he said.
However, re-election in 2007 could still leave open the possibility of running for another national office, one in which candidacy won't be announced until the summer of 2008.
Vice President Barbour, anyone?
Haley ping
Ms?
that would be MS not Ms.
it is NY not Ny. or N.Y.
Yeah it suck living here but not as much as it sucks being you.
And you have a great day also.
AND FYI every time I post it as MS. Someone like you comes along and says what has Micro Soft got to do with it. So I am at the mercy of the SAPPs no matter what I do.
I don't see it happening. As Governor he appears to be effective but Presidential material? I don't see it.
So they had a pageant in the Governor's mansion and Haley won? I hope he wins in 2008 too!
Love the Cartman car.
posted 'Ms?" because I was confused about what you....or what I figured, the author (usually the title is copied right off the article) was trying to say. Thats all.
What does he need to talk to Yankees for? We can win without their votes.
Me neither. Haley is your typical country club RNC hack.
Plus, he's not photogenic to be President. He looks like a retired boxer.
Why are you asking me that?
I don't see any connection to what I said and what
you are saying. It has NOTHING to do with weight or speech nor did I in any way intimate that.
Did you not see the :>)
I was joking .
yeah tell Ohio and the Dakotas, Montana, Indiana, Iowa Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska to go back to sleep. The souths gonna do it again.
Plus, he's not photogenic to be President. He looks like a retired boxer.
See stop em There is the very reason I posted
that to you. I rest my case.
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