NRO reports:
Just like that, Mississippi governor Haley Barbour is out of the 2012 presidential sweepstakes.
Barbour hadn’t made much of an impression in the polls, clocking in at around 1 percent, but the former Republican National Committee chairman had an outsize influence in the world of GOP insiders. Today, other candidates have one less competitor to worry about and a host of liberated political professionals looking for somewhere to land.
“There are a lot of other potential nominees who are breathing a big sigh of relief today,” says Ed Gillespie, another former RNC chairman and a longtime friend of the Mississippi governor. “He would have been very formidable contender. He had locked up a lot of talent in the early states.” The 2012 field, Gillespie notes, is now more “muddied and unformed” with Barbour’s absence.
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