BARBOUR IS OUT – AT 5:43 P.M. ET:  Mississippi Republican Governor Haley Barbour announced today that he will not be a candidate for president in 2012.  From The Politico:

Haley Barbour said Monday that he won't run for president in 2012, removing a fundraising powerhouse with establishment clout from the Republican primary field.

"This has been a difficult, personal decision, and I am very grateful to my family for their total support of my going forward, had that been what I decided," the Mississippi governor said in a statement.

"A candidate for president today is embracing a 10-year commitment to an all-consuming effort, to the virtual exclusion of all else," Barbour added. "His (or her) supporters expect and deserve no less than absolute fire in the belly from their candidate. I cannot offer that with certainty, and total certainty is required."

That's pro forma.  This is speculation, but I sense that Barbour didn't see a practical route to victory.

Barbour's announcement stunned political insiders — just hours earlier, many were expecting him to meet his self-imposed deadline and enter the race by the end of April.

COMMENT:  I wasn't all that stunned.  Barbour has been a fine governor and is a superb political operative.  But he is little known by the general electorate outside his state. 

I've written here before that Barbour faced one huge obstacle, and it's spelled M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i.  Even if he got the nomination, he'd be running against the nation's first black president, and he's governor of a state that, unfairly or not, is still associated in the minds of many with the greatest resistance to civil rights.  You can just feel the uneasiness, and you can certainly predict the broad hints about what a Barbour victory in November would "say about us."  The race card will be played no matter who the GOP candidate is.  If it were Barbour, the whole deck would be played.

I think it's a wise decision.  Secretary of Commerce looks fine.

April 25, 2011