"If I'm losing weight by December of next year," Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told an audience of fellow Republicans in Biloxi (Miss.) in 2010, "I've either got cancer or I'm running for President."
Last month, having shed 25 pounds already, the two-term governor and former Republican National Committee chairman certainly looked as though he had decided to run in 2012. So that's why the announcement Monday by the 62-year-old Barbour that he won't run for President has left friends and supporters nationwide virtually speechless.
"I'm stunned," was the response from Missouri's Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, an admirer and friend of Barbour for decades, when I told him of the Mississippian's announcement Monday afternoon. "I felt sure Haley was going to run."
Kinder (who spoke to HUMAN EVENTS while helping with flood relief in southeast Missouri) added that while he is and has been neutral in the '12 presidential sweepstakes, "Haley was a sentimental favorite, like an older brother."
Several Republican sources told HUMAN EVENTS that, in terms of national politics, the immediate result of Barbour's decision not to run was to raise the odds that Indiana's Gov. Mitch Daniels will run. In recent months, Daniels has been quiet about a presidential bid, and friends say his wife has been strongly opposed to a candidacy by the former Office of Management and Budget director.
"But Haley and Mitch are very close, and both know issues in and out as well as know the political lay of the land throughout the country," a prominent Republican office-holder who knows both men (and requested anonymity) told HUMAN EVENTS. "They would never have run against one another. But without Haley running, there's a much better chance Mitch will."
Fresh from a stunning year as chairman of the Republican Governors Association (in which the GOP had won 22 of the 36 gubernatorial races nationwide), Barbour had been a key player in the election of Reince Priebus as Republican National Committee chairman in January. Nephew and Mississippi's GOP National Committeeman Henry Barbour was taking the names of out-of-state supporters, and Haley Barbour had made numerous campaign trips to the early presidential battle sites of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
Even his distinct accent and Deep South heritage did not seem a deterrent to a Barbour candidacy in the North. Ohio Gov. John Kasich had said he would support the Mississippian for President if he ran, and Barbour won high marks for his address at the annual Prescott Bush dinner held by Republicans in Connecticut.
So that's why pundits and pols are wondering, "Why didn't Haley do it?" Was it because of his background as a high-powered Washington lobbyist—in which clients included several foreign countries—or was Barbour simply lacking the fire in the belly to campaign for the next 19 months, much like Dick Cheney when the former secretary of defense concluded months of appearances in 1995 only to say he would not run for President the following year?
Given the vagueness of Barbour's announcement Monday, we probably won't know until he writes his memoirs. What is important to follow now is how the Republican race will be affected by the exit of someone who would definitely have been a major political player.
