...go about their daily lives, I lie awake at night pondering such questions as, "Who will be the Republican nominee for president in 2012?"
Yesterday, Haley Barbour's wife threw a monkey wrench into my calculus when she said that the personal sacrifices her husband would have to make "horrified" her and that a campaign for president would be "a huge sacrifice for a family to make."
Now Barbour is considered a master politician; it's hard to believe his wife would make those remarks unscripted. So what's going on here? Is Barbour floating a trial balloon? Is he getting cold feet? Does he think the president is unbeatable? Hard to say...
But if Barbour were to drop out, it would leave only two credible candidates left, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty (Newt Gingrich being seen more and more as an eccentric gadfly).
Now I said two credible candidates; there's still room for at least one tea partier. And, as of this writing, it could very well be Michele Bachmann.
Ms. Bachmann could make a very respectable showing -- if not an outright win -- in the Iowa caucus next year. After that comes the New Hampshire primary, which Mitt Romney is expected to take. (Depending on the exact results of those two contests, T-Paw could be knocked out by that point.)
In fact, going into South Carolina, it could be a two-person race between Bachmann and Romney. And who do you think would be generating all the buzz by then?
Oops -- crystal ball is getting cloudy. I guess that's all for now. But stay tuned; this could be a great horse race.
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