Philip Klein writes an interesting profile on Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, calling him a "wonk in sheep's clothing."
It's also clear that the policy emphasis will be part of how he'll respond to questions about the role of race in the campaign. "The hard left who would never vote for me want to make it a big issue," he said. "They want to make race a proxy issue, because they don't want the election to be about public policy. They don't want the election to be about Obama's policies. They want some charade about something else. And when you have a white Christian conservative Republican from Mississippi, the easiest straw man to throw out is race."
I've previously defended Barbour as one of the least bad choices on the GOP side, and against the meme that his inaction and stilted memories of segregation make him a racist. But it's grating, given his own blinders when it comes to race, that he would then portray himself as a victim of intolerance because he's "a white Christian conservative Republican from Mississippi." Imagine if Barack Obama kicked off his 2012 campaign by arguing that his critics just dislike him because he's a black guy from Chicago. Republicans would be shouting that Obama "played the race card" so loudly they'd turn half the country deaf.
The fact that Barbour can go around complaining about being discriminated against for being a white Christian Republican is a luxury he has because he is a white Christian Republican. Whatever the merits of this as a solution to his race problems, I hope he understands that personally, or he's learned little since his younger days.
