Last time I discussed the impact that Tea Party activists and Christian ‘values’ voters had on the presidential aspirations of three Republican governors held in high regard by the GOP establishment, but no longer involved in the 2012 campaign. Two other Republican governors also declined to run, but for markedly different reasons.
The current Governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, surprised many Republicans when he announced his decision to run for the GOP nomination earlier this year. Although Barbour cited the physical strain of a 63-year-old man running for president as well as the family and duty expressed by Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie, Republican insiders claim his real reason was more pragmatic. Despite his fundraising prowess and numerous political and business connections, Barbour concluded that he simply couldn’t win because of his racial segregationist past.
Barbour grew up in Yazoo City, Mississippi during the 1950s and ’60s, the primetime of the civil rights movement. His father-figure uncle, William Barbour, led a ‘Citizen’s Council’ in the city formed in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to overturn state laws favouring racially segregated education. When 53 African-American residents signed an August 1955 petition calling for desegregation of Yazoo City’s local schools, the council retaliated by publishing their names and asking whites to stop dealing with them. Over the next four months, 51 of the petition signers asked to have their names removed due to their loss of jobs and business.
But in an August 2010 interview with the Weekly Standard, Barbour ignored this fact and claimed that the Citizens’ Council was an organisation of town leaders that facilitated integration in Mississippi because “they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan would get their ass run out of town”.
Mind you, Haley Barbour had other political liabilities as a lobbyist for business special interest groups in Washington DC, not to mention Mississippi’s ranking as the worst of 50 states in a wide range of areas including economic development, education and healthcare. Even though Barbour had been able to develop persuasive arguments for why those things shouldn’t be held against him, the fact is he was never able to come up with a satisfying response to charges about his segregationist past.
Much more surprising to this political commentator was former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s announcement that he would also not run for President in 2012. Huckabee is an ordained Baptist minister who had used his Christian ‘values’ credentials to become a favourite of the GOP’s anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage Christian social conservatives. Despite John McCain and Mitt Romney’s huge cash advantages, Huckabee used the support of his base to win the first Republican primary in Iowa in the previous campaign and then ran a surprisingly close second to the eventual nomination winner.
Unlike Romney and most of the other Republican candidates, Huckabee was a very personable candidate who used his quick wit and self-deprecating sense of humour to good advantage with audiences out on the campaign trail as well as on TV. His affability led to his current jobs as ABC’s replacement for legendary radio commentator Paul Harvey and as the TV host of Fox News weekend show Huckabee.
Being as he was a consistent leader in polls of Republican voters, I was surprised on when he announced on his TV show on 14 May that he would not run for President, saying: “All the factors say go, but my heart says no.” After further reflection, I think he was telling the truth, just not the whole truth.
Huckabee’s heart wasn’t in it because he has always hated trolling for campaign funds, and he surely preferred drawing a seven-figure annual income from a few hours of TV and radio work every week to the rigours of campaigning for President.
I will discuss the real reasons why three other Republican hopefuls decided not to run, including my favourite Republican diva Sarah Palin, in my next and last column of 2011.
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursuing a PhD in International Relations and lectures on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU
