Why would any district north of the Ohio–or even in border states!–pick Barbour, who is an old, deep-fried, Deep South, slow-talking troll out of central casting, over a well-spoken middle-aged Yankee like Barry Obama?
Well, people in southern Missouri & northern Arkansas might, I suppose. But I think Barbour could just about lose Springfield, let alone St. Louis. Lose Missouri & the GOP is probably done.
I think Missouri would easily vote for Barbour over Obama if the election were today. Hell, we voted McCain over Obama too. It’s a pretty conservative state, and the cities are shrinking (as opposed to some other states that are bluing). It will be interesting if the motivation levels are as high in urban centers for an Obama re-election as they were for his election.
But in the end, yeah, it’s probably too hard to take Ohio/Penn and the western states (CO/NM/NV) with Barbour. That’s why I think Daniels is a better choice.
But I think Barbour will run, and doing well in the South can take you a long ways towards the Republican nomination, especially in a fractured field.
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What the Republican party needs to do is clamp down on their base. Unless they can get the Tea Party and it’s pushers like Beck to shut-up and accept some compromises they don’t stand a chance because they won’t be able to field anyone capable of getting wide centralist support.
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But why give a crap what the tea party thinks any more than the dems care about the greens? The tea party is a small minority of the right wing. Sure, they’re noisy, but so were people who supported Nader. The worst thing they can do is to give undue weight to the wingnuts. Ignore them and let them field their own third-party candidate.