Yeah, I’m sure Haley Barbour would make a whale of a presidential candidate. His delusional and pro-drilling rhetoric since the spill started in the Gulf have enabled him to “help shift his political image from that of an insider party boss to an out-front crisis manager — and possible presidential candidate in 2012.” How’s this gonna sound on the trail?
VAN SUSTEREN: Governor, I have a little audio problems, I must confess. But let me ask you about tomorrow’s meeting with the president with the BP officials. What is it that you want to hear him ask and discuss tomorrow?
BARBOUR: Well, look, BP is responsible to pay for everything. If BP is the responsible party under the law, they’re to pay for everything. I do worry that this idea of making them make a huge escrow fund is going to make it less likely that they’ll pay for everything. They need their capital to drill wells. They need their capital to produce income so that they can pay that income to our citizens in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, and to pay for all the damages done. BP needs to pay, is supposed to pay, must pay every penny. But this escrow bothers me that it’s going to make them less able to pay us what they owe us. And that concerns me.
How is it going to make it less likely that BP will pay for everything if they put $20 billion up front at $5 billion per year? If $5 billion per year is going to bankrupt them, then they’re not paying everything back anyway.
And then there is this:
He has also made a smattering of offense-bringing remarks over the years. Most recently, he defended Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s omission of slavery from his Confederate History Month proclamation in Virginia, saying the uproar was “just a nit” and “something that doesn’t matter for diddly.”
If that’s not a winner with the youth vote, maybe this will win them over.
Mr. Barbour has been generally muted in his criticism of BP and was among the first Republicans to object to the Obama administration’s insistence on a $20 billion BP escrow account to settle damage claims. He has also warned against efforts by the left to turn the spill into a regulatory cause célèbre.
“A bunch of liberal elites were hoping this would be the Three Mile Island of offshore drilling,” Mr. Barbour recently told the Mississippi Manufacturers Association.
I live in Pennsylvania. Three Mile Island was a molehill compared to the Gulf spill, and everyone knows it.
But very serious people tell me that Haley Barbour, former tobacco lobbyist, is going to be a great threat in 2012.
Maybe you are right, but look at Fred thompson, you never know!!!!
Grandpa Fred was AWESOME on the campaign. He actually sucked energy out a room. Even a living room.
Have you seen his latest commercial? It’s some low-rent masterpiece.
My, how the mighty [overrated] have fallen.
I’d buy a pillow from him.
But very serious people tell me that Haley Barbour, former tobacco lobbyist, is going to be a great threat in 2012.
Great threat? I don’t know. But his being the GOP nominee in ’12 isn’t some wacky conspiracy theory. Given the way the GOP picks their nominee, he might just be the one since there is no “next in line.” Since Barbour has been a water carrier for the big money boys for a long time now
It is a good idea never to underestimate (or was that “misunderestimate”) Republican candidates. They are not playing by the same rules as Democrats and they have a willing media and some stacked courts to cover for them. We’ve been down that road.
By the time the conventional wisdom spouters get through with him, a sizable number of non-Mississippians will think he’s an environmentalist.
That said, my sense of 2012 is that Barbour is going to be lost in the Donnybrook of Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Mitch Daniels, Newt Gingrich, and Jim DeMint will kick up. Ron Paul most likely will give it a go again. At the moment, my guess is that Daniels has the best bet of coming from nowhere.
Yup. All they have to do is repeat this tripe over and again, and voila.
It’s gonna be a terrific freak show.
Mitch is currently enjoying the pending destruction of public schools as we knew them in Indiana. For him, the icing on the cake is the chance to break the teachers’ union. The man is a heartless little creep, but knows when to put on the plaid shirt and climb on the Harley for the Mr. Folksie road show that never fails to wow the low info yokels. As governor, he has systematically gutted one state department after another, until much of the institutional memory is gone. Beware of this one, he has the potential to equal and perhaps even surpass the Darth Cheney record.
Here’s a page from the Daniels “canon of ethics”. The story was published May, 2003.
Nothing came of the investigation. Martha Stewart wasn’t so lucky.
“Three Mile Island was a molehill compared to the Gulf spill, and everyone knows it.”
I think his point was that TMI killed all nuclear power plant construction for decades (though that is something of a myth). I certainly would be pleased if the Deepwater Horizon disaster did the same for offshore drilling. But, sadly, I don’t think it will.
I know what he meant. And I know how pathetic it sounds from a political point of view.
Haley Barbour is a thief. Just ask Ambrous Young.
Haley Barbour reminds me of Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard. He’s like a caricature of a crooked politician that could only survive in the deep South maybe 30 years ago.
Run Haley, run!