A headlining day for Barbour in the national media
Barbour Won’t Rule Out 2012 Presidential Run
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is not ready to rule out a 2012 presidential bid.
Questioned twice on Wednesday about whether he might run, the two-term governor and former Republican National Committee chairman dodged.
“Any Republican who’s not focused on the 2009 and 2010” gubernatorial and congressional elections “doesn’t have his eye on the ball,” Barbour said. “I’m going to keep my eye on the ball.”
The 61-year-old Barbour, who cannot seek re-election in 2011 because of term limits, was speaking after a wide-ranging morning breakfast session with reporters that was sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
During the hour-long session, Barbour portrayed President Barack Obama as more liberal than President Bill Clinton.
“Obama is far to the left of Clinton,” Barbour said. “President Obama is offering us a size of government beyond anything that any Democrat or Republican has ever campaigned for,” he said.
But he spared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., who has heard other Republicans, including former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who have called for her to step down.
CQ Politics
5/20/9
GOP can yet prevail in a diverse America, Barbour asserts
The nation’s changing demographics won’t be a permanent roadblock to a Republican comeback, the former party chairman said Wednesday at a Monitor breakfast.
Mississippi governor and former Republican Party chairman Haley Barbour doesn’t put much stock in a Democratic strategist’s prediction that the GOP is destined to wander in the political wilderness for decades as a result of changing voter demographics.
In fact, he dismisses it.
“In politics, nothing is ever as bad as it seems and never as good as it seems,” Governor Barbour told reporters Wednesday at a Monitor-sponsored breakfast.
Amid post-election soul-searching by Republicans, who for most of the past 30 years have not been accustomed to being the minority party, comes a salt-in-the-wound new book by Democratic activist James Carville, “40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation.” In it, he argues that “the demographic foundations of the Republican Party are crumbling.” Among other things, Mr. Carville notes the Republican Party’s especially weak standing among young and nonwhite voters.
Christian-Science Monitor
5/20/9
Don’t Kill Reagan, Says Gov. Haley Barbour
Enough already with the talk in GOP circles that it’s time to put a stake through Ronald Reagan’s heart. Just the opposite, says self-described Reaganite Haley Barbour, Mississippi’s two-term governor and a former Republican National Committee chairman. The time is now to apply Reagan’s values and principles to a party that’s lost its way, he says. “My point is that the issue-set changes that you’ve got to deal with,” says the popular guv, who is on some 2012 GOP presidential shortlists. “Republicans aren’t thinking that we ought to get out Ronald Reagan’s playbook and go start practicing those plays. But our principles and values haven’t changed,” he says.
Barbour comes down between those in the party who want to junk Reagan and others who want to resurrect him. His advice is simple: Adopt the heart of Reagan’s stands—low taxes, smaller and less intrusive government, compassion—and apply it to everyday issues. And then use that to take on President Obama, whom Barbour dubbed a far lefty. “I guess it’s an issue of the definition of freedom,” he says, adopting the language of the Reagan Foundation, which is planning to open a Washington office soon to keep the Gipper’s values alive.
U.S. News and World Report
5/20/9
Haley Barbour: Obama a snake charmer
Gov. Haley Barbour (R-Miss.) predicted Wednesday that despite his current popularity in the polls, President Barack Obama will eventually suffer the same reversal of political fortune that befell President Bill Clinton in 1994.
“What they have in common is that everything for them is political. They wage a perpetual campaign. They are both extraordinary politicians. Either one of them could charm the skin off a snake,” Barbour told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.
Barbour, who was handily reelected to a second term in 2007, served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1993 to 1997. Barbour linked Clinton’s unpopular efforts to raise taxes and to reform health policy in 1993 to the GOP’s capture of both the Senate and House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years.
The difference, Barbour suggested, is that Clinton, in time, made his peace with the Ronald Reagan revolution, informing Congress that the era of big government is over.
“His policies were liberal, but not nearly as far left as those of Obama,” Barbour said.
Politico
5/20/9
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22763.html#ixzz0G5w0aKPl&B
Barbour makes pitch for bigger GOP tent
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) said he is optimistic about the Republican Party’s chances at returning to power, but to do so, he said, the party has to accept some more centrist leaders.
“We’re not going to elect Haley Barbour senator from Vermont, and we have to understand that, as a party, that there are great Republican governors who are more moderate than I am, who are different on issues than I might be,” Barbour told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.
“In a party that got 60 percent of the vote for president twice in my lifetime, it’s silly to think everybody’s going to agree on everything,” he added. “We’re not. But in a two-party system, both parties are coalitions.”
Barbour, whose lengthy career includes a stint in Ronald Reagan’s White House, years building one of Washington’s most successful lobbying practices and a term at the helm of the Republican National Committee (RNC) before winning two terms as governor, said he has seen enough in politics not to despair at news that significant demographic groups are abandoning the GOP.
“I don’t believe, from my experience in politics, that the votes of demographic groups, because they went in one way one election, are going to go that way in every election,” he said. “Except for the African-American vote, which is the most monolithic voting group, a lot of these voters move around.
The Hill
5/20/9
