Dark horse Republican
to the rescue?

WASHINGTON - People here remember Haley Barbour as a slightly raffish Mississippi good ol’ boy with a low center of gravity and a syrupy drawl who became chairman of the Republican Party, made a bundle as a tobacco lobbyist and then went home to – of all things – become governor: A shrewd inside player, but not someone who automatically springs to mind as presidential material.

It speaks volumes about the condition of the GOP that at least a few people around town are talking up Barbour as a Republican presidential contender in 2008 – and that at least a few of his fellow Republicans (and not just his former business partner, Ed Rogers) seem to be taking the idea somewhat seriously.

Here’s the long and short of the reasons why:

1. There is no obvious successor to George Walker Bush as El Jefe of the GOP except perhaps Gov. John Ellis “Jeb” Bush of Florida who, by virtue of being Little Brother to the President, is too oppressively obvious and therefore problematic.

2. The party’s centrifugal forces of ideological and personality have been held together by the iron bands of Bushian will and Roveian guile. But, if for no other reason than that the president can’t run for a third term, these bands soon will break.

3. Religious conservatives, numerous and powerful in the GOP-dominated South, are the crucial voting bloc in the GOP – and the contest for their allegiance is wide open, and most likely to matter most in the Southern primaries.

4. Others in the party have taken the measure of Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader and supposedly Carl Rove’s favorite. They think Frist can be had. Yes, he is from the Bible Belt, but he is too princely in demeanor and had enough faith in (and knowledge of) science to have become one of the world’s leading thoracic surgeons. What’s more, they say, he is studious to a fault in the Kerry mold.

5. To please the right, most of the GOP's presidential wannabes will try to outdo each other in denouncing an arcane matter of Senate procedure, the Democrats use of the "filibuster" to stop Bush's judicial nominations. There is a significant minority who don't want to abolish the use of the tactic -- a favorite of conservatives in eras gone by -- but that's what they are: a minority.

Which is where Barbour comes in, or so his friends think. He’s a pro-business country club sort, stylistically – he can talk to the heathens Up North – but he’s certifiably Bible Belt in his roots and rising. “He’d be the only real Southerner in the race,” one of his buddies proudly told me the other night in what, at that moment, was the Ground Zero of early GOP presidential speculation: the FOX News tent at the Radio and Television Dinner.

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