Democrats just love Haley Barbour -- Republican governor of Mississippi, current president of the Republican Governors Association, and former head of the RNC. He's the gift that keeps on givin.'
The latest Barbourism: "I think the most important thing is for people not to panic and not to assume the worst," he said this week about the hemorrhaging oil in the Gulf of Mexico. "Some in the news media keep forcing this on the public as the equivalent of Exxon Valdez. Well, the difference is just enormous."
Oh yeah, enormous. Like the Valdez had only 11 million gallons of oil, while the gusher in the Gulf won't stop until we plug it -- maybe for months. Haley thinks because the oil's spread out more (Prince William Sound in Alaska was smaller than the Gulf of Mexico), that makes it less of a crisis. For whom? Not the fish or the birds, and maybe not even the people.
Yep, that's ole Haley. Same guy who said that it ''didn't mean diddly" when Virginia's Republican governor left slavery out of a Confederate History Month proclamation. Even after Gov. Bob McDonnell himself apologized.
So, gosh, the biggest oil spill in the history of humankind and the proximate cause of the Civil War don't impress Governor Barbour much at all. Yep, that's Haley!
This is the same man whose campaign slogan while running for governor of the poorest state in the union was: "We can do better!" After all, as a top-shelf Washington lobbyist, Haley brought home the bacon for some of America's biggest corporations and represented Mexico during NAFTA negotiations. So what did he do for Mississippi after almost 8 years in the top job? You guessed it--my fellow Mississippians are still at the bottom in per capita income.
Barbour got a few good marks for his handling of Hurricane Katrina, which hit Mississippi hardest of all. (New Orleans suffered from collapsing levees, not Katrina directly.) Then come to find out that Haley had given most of the federal aid money to the big insurance companies, rather than to low-income Mississippians, as Congress had directed. Haley's never met a rich company he didn't like.
Of course, when he was first campaigning for governor in 2003, Barbour made the obligatory stops at the Head Start centers that provide so much assistance for the state's poor children. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Barbour said to one principal: "Head Start is a godsend for Mississippi. Some of those kids in it would be better off sitting up on a piano bench at a whorehouse than where they are now." That by way of a compliment. Somehow you knew those Barbourisms were just gonna keep comin.'
So keep talkin,' Haley. With any luck Sarah Palin will pick you as her VP candidate, because by comparison you'll make her look positively presidential. And that's just what Democrats want in 2012.