What Haley Barbour Would Have To Overcome

Lloyd Grove reads the tea leaves for 2012:

[A]lthough he is, by many measures, a successful politician, he’s governor of a tiny state (population: 2.9 million) that ranks last in such indices as median household income, academic achievement, and health care; and first in obesity, infant mortality, teen birthrate, and sexually transmitted diseases; and boasts a troubled and violent racial history that still shapes its identity.

And Barbour reinforces all the reasons the GOP has alienated so many independents: an anti-government party also up to its neck in corporate lobbyists; and a party so regionally fixated it is close to becoming a cultural, identity-politics ghetto rather than a national party offering national policy proposals. Barbour simply isn't presidential material. And at this rate, the GOP debates will be the worst advertizing and branding the party will get since ... Bobby Jindal responded to Barack Obama.

(Photo: Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi speaks during the final day of the American Conservative Union's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) February 12, 2011 in Washington, DC. By Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)