Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Barbour: 2010 Seems Better Than '94 For GOP

By Richard E. Cohen  

Gov. Haley Barbour

Mississippi Republican

The political environment for Republicans is better now than it was around this time in 1994, according to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R).

In President Obama's first year, Americans wanted action on jobs, not health care reform, Barbour told National Journal on Sunday at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association. "The fear of the effects of this unbelievable spending spurt, and the gigantic deficits that accompany it -- the fear of what that's going to do for them, their children and their grandchildren is real," he said.

Barbour also discussed why Republicans have outperformed Democrats in their messaging and whether or not he'll run in the 2012 presidential race.

Edited excerpts follow.

NJ: Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and you share some things in common. Each of you have been national party chairmen. He's made the point that you Republicans have done a better job than the Democrats in the past year with getting the message out. Do you want to respond to that?

Barbour: What's happened this year is consistent with my experience. What has happened is, the more the public has learned about the Democrat proposals, the more they are opposed to them. This is very similar to President Clinton's first "economic plan." Sometime late in February of 1993, he announced his economic plan. The overnight poll said it was 78 percent approval. His economic plan, which later became known as the largest tax increase in American history, passed the House and the Senate without a single vote to spare --

NJ: Right.

Barbour: And it was approved by 35 percent of Americans at the time. "Clinton Care" was the same way. Started out in September. Very popular. The more people found out about it ...

NJ: And you were Republican national chairman then. Do you think you and other Republicans deserved any credit then?

Barbour: I think the Republicans deserved a huge amount of credit in 1993 and '4 because we helped get the facts out. You know, it just wasn't "Harry and Louise." We talked about it. And we had liberal Republicans like [Sen.] John Chafee, a bona fide health care expert, who stood up and said, "I am for health care reform, but I cannot be for this." And that's what you're seeing up there now. What they've proposed is a government-run health care system, and Americans don't want a government-run health care system. We want some things changed. We want some things done better. But we don't want health care reform that makes health insurance premiums higher.

NJ: Can you talk about what's happened in the past year among Republicans and what's going on with the grassroots?

Barbour: Next week there will be an announcement of the American Action Network, a center-right organization. Norm Coleman's going to chair. It's a participatory policy development institute that will not do original research per se, because there's plenty of original research available from Hoover and Hudson and Heritage and Cato and AEI and -- you can go down the list. But they will aggregate that. They will synthesize it, and then they will expose party leadership and other conservatives and moderates to the ideas.... But the idea is to have an agenda for America from the center-right that people have had a chance to buy into.

NJ: What's going to determine the outcome in November, and how bullish are you about all that?

Barbour: First of all, a month's a light year in politics. But I will say today that the political environment in America for Republicans is better in February of 2010 than it was in February 1994.

NJ: That's pretty good.

Barbour: It's extremely good.

NJ: What makes it better than even 1994?

Barbour: The opposition to Obama's policies. The feeling among Americans that when jobs should have been priority one, two, three, four, five, they watch Congress for seven months fight over health care reform. The fear of the effects of this unbelievable spending spurt, and the gigantic deficits that accompany it -- the fear of what that's going to do for them, their children and their grandchildren is real.

NJ: Stimulus. The Democrats have been all over you, criticizing you lately for having Mississippi take some money from the stimulus program even though you've been critical of it. Do you want to respond to that?

Barbour: Let me just say, first of all, we did not accept $56 million of the stimulus money in the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act because it would have required us to raise employment taxes in Mississippi on our employers, by about $17-19 million a year. When your number one priority is job creation, why in the world would you put a tax on creating jobs? To me, it was the stupidest policy that they could have thought of. But we said all along we're going to accept the federal government's money unless it causes us to do something that's not in Mississippi's interest.

NJ: There's a $20 million TIGER grant for a rail line from Gulfport. Respond to those who say that taking that money -- and other money, but that $20 million -- from a program that you've criticized, in general terms, if that's hypocrisy, and why is that not hypocrisy?

Barbour: That is hyperbole on the part of the people that say that. Every one of our states has federal programs that we participate in that we would change if we could. [Michigan Gov.] Jennifer Granholm may change it in the opposite direction from me, but we get offered the federal programs, our taxpayers pay for them. That is why I think there's hardly any governor of either party who does not participate in a program he disagrees with because his people are paying for it, and while he would have done it differently, his people get some benefit out of it.

NJ: Newsweek magazine did a story, a profile of you last month. The headline was that you were the anti-Obama, just as a contrast to him. As an anti-Obama, could you see yourself at the very least playing a significant role in the 2012 presidential campaign?

Barbour: All of my political energy and time this year's going to be dedicated to electing Republican governors. We've got 37 governor races -- 24 Republicans and 26 Democrats, or that's the balance today. I think we can get up to 30 Republicans. And I'm going to spend all of my political time and energy on that. When those elections are over, I'm going to see if there's anything to think about. I think the likelihood that I run for president is not very high. There's no use of even thinking about it until after November. And one of the reasons is I want to set an example for people in our party. Any Republican who's not focused on 2010 doesn't have his eye on the ball.