Winnowing

Two articles this morning, a WaPo piece by Dan Balz and another by Michael Sheer in the NYT, both use the excuse of Haley Barbour's exit to analyze why the GOP field is so small (at least if one only counts the candidates with a plausible chance of winning).

I can only repeat what I've been saying: it's not that the field is small; it's that the winnowing has begun early.

Now, on top of that, it's possible we'll wind up with a normal sized field of candidates in Iowa, with Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Mitch Daniels joining Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. But the key point here is that the GOP field for 2012 surely included those five and Barbour and John Thune and perhaps a couple others.

I sort of covered this yesterday, but just to be clear...we don't know what's happening with every case. But Barbour clearly was doing the things that candidates do who are running for the nomination when we're a year and less away from the Iowa caucuses, and it's not unreasonable to conclude that it didn't go as well as he hoped. Now, again, we don't know what his threshold was. Some candidates (say, Chris Dodd) are willing to keep pushing up to the point where the voters get involved, even if it's clear that their once-promising hopes have been reduced to a sliver of vague possibility. Others aren't willing to continue -- and that's the correct word, continue -- unless they retain a good chance of winning.

So what happened with Barbour (and Thune, and Mike Pence, and perhaps others)? Maybe he failed repeatedly to hit fundraising goals. Maybe some key endorsers notified him they were going with other candidates. Maybe the polling came back all wrong (not just the topline numbers, which we know stunk for him, but maybe they tested some attack lines and got bad news back).

And, yes, maybe given the same bad or mixed news, Dodd or Joe Biden or someone else might have stuck around; it could be that Barbour really did lack a bit of "fire in the belly" as he said in his withdrawal statement.

But, look, we call this period the "invisible primary" for a reason: just like in the state-by-state primaries to come next year, the current contest has winners and losers, and the losers tend to drop out. Now, some potential candidates really haven't contested the invisible primary...I haven't read anything, for example, about Jeb Bush. So I'll chalk him up as a "did not run." But those who hired staff, sought endorsements, traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina -- they contested the invisible primary. They were candidates for 2012. Even if they didn't quite make it all the way to 2012.

Barbour Out

In a bit of a shocker -- well, to me at least -- Haley Barbour is apparently out of WH '12. Yikes! Among other things, Barbour was part of my longshot trio, along with Rick Perry and Jim DeMint. When you bet on longshots who finish up the track, you're never exactly "wrong," but...well, it sure looks as if I won't be cashing those tickets.

What happened? Did he decide he really didn't like campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire all that much? In his statement, he refers to "fire in the belly," or that is his lack of it. Or did he just find out that there was less appeal than he hoped for a good ole boy lobbyist in today's GOP? After all, his statement also refers to "hundreds" of supporters who have urged him to run, which isn't actually very impressive. The Sage of Wasilla, no doubt, has thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, begging her to make the race, despite her overall lack of popularity.

Without further information, it's hard to say whether Barbour (or any other candidate with a similar announcement) should be counted as "did not run" or "winnowed out early." My inclination, again pending further information, is to put them all (Barbour, Thune, Palin and Huck if they don't show up in Iowa) in the "winnowed out early" category. At least those (unlike, say, Jeb Bush) who have sort-of, in-a-way run during the invisible primary stage.

So: kudos for now to those who thought Barbour never had a prayer, and the contest moves on.

Time to update my state-of-the-field analysis. This leaves two -- two! -- active, fully running candidates who in my view have a plausible chance of winning: Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, along with three on-the-fence candidates (Palin, Huck, and Mitch Daniels) who have a plausible chance. And I still consider two potential candidates who do not appear to be running now, Perry and Bush, to have a plausible chance if they were to enter soon. There are also ten candidates "running" in various forms who I do not think have a plausible chance.

Barbour and Playing By the Rules

Haley Barbour has, presumably, the exact opposite problem than the one that plagues Sarah Palin's presidential ambitions. Barbour certainly plays by the rules; I don't know what he really thinks about issues, but I don't think there are many GOP constituencies that would worry about being locked out of a Barbour White House, or not being able to cut deals with a President Barbour (some Tea Partiers might sense he's not really their type of Republican, but he doesn't have the kinds of difficult past positions to defend, as far as I know, that many in the rest of the field have).

The problem for Barbour, one that has led many liberals to assume that his candidacy is entirely implausible, isn't going to be with insiders; it's with voters. It is true that Barbour starts with very little support, presumably; he's a small-state governor with little national profile. But the big thing is that as a dealmaking former lobbyist, he seems more like a cartoon character than a national politician. He's no John Thune, or even a Mitt Romney; he just doesn't look the part, and his resume matches the look.

This, however, is where the primaries come in. Republican leaders (as always, interpreted very broadly) who either would be very happy with or at least could easily live with Barbour as president may share the suspicion that voters just wouldn't like Haley Barbour very much. The traditional way to test this has been to watch the results of presidential primaries and caucuses. Candidates who intrigue party leaders but seem risky to put before voters -- everyone from John Kennedy in 1960 to Howard Dean in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 -- have "proved" their strengths or weaknesses. Now, I'll be the first to agree that Howard Dean's poor showing in Iowa in 2004 didn't really prove anything, but party leaders need to make choices and don't have clearly better information available, so they're likely to overemphasize what they do have. Thus the demise of Dean after Iowa in 2004, and the flight of party leaders towards Obama after Iowa 2008.

I have no idea whether Boss Hogg will be an appealing image to Republican caucus attendees in Iowa next winter, or to Republican primary voters in New Hampshire. If, however, he can survive those two events (that is, at least a respectable third place finish in both); if no clear nominee has emerged; and if the other finalists are unacceptable to major constituencies within the party...well, at that point, he's a pretty logical nominee. How likely is it that all three things would happen? I don't know, but I'd say better than one in twenty, anyway. If you believe that Mitt Romney is certain to collapse either because of health care (which I don't expect) or religion (which I think is possible, but I can't make odds on it), then Barbour's chances are that much higher.

I said a while ago that I thought Barbour, Jim DeMint, and Rick Perry were the three candidates seriously undervalued in Intrade's market. At that point they were at 2%, 1%, and 1%, respectively; today Barbour is up to 5% while the other two round up to 1% and still have made no formal steps toward running. I'll stick with that bet, still. I'm not predicting one of the three will win, but I think they're all plausible, while, say, Newt Gingrich (steady at a bit under 6%) just is not.