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Political insider are oddly surprised Gov. Haley Barbour has declined tun run in 2012:

Haley Barbour said Monday that he won’t run for president in 2012, removing a fundraising powerhouse with establishment clout from the Republican primary field.

“This has been a difficult, personal decision, and I am very grateful to my family for their total support of my going forward, had that been what I decided,” the Mississippi governor said in a statement.

“A candidate for president today is embracing a 10-year commitment to an all-consuming effort, to the virtual exclusion of all else,” Barbour added. “His [or her] supporters expect and deserve no less than absolute fire in the belly from their candidate. I cannot offer that with certainty, and total certainty is required.”

Barbour’s decision to not run does not surprise me. He is using the buzz words of avoiding a decade’s worth of commitment being too much for him as a cover for the more specific truth--he is identified as being ’too Southern.” A neo-Confederate, really. Deservedly or not, (I do not believe he is a racist) he would wind up fighting off accusations of racism from the day he announced a serious bid for the White House.

I have only had a passing awareness of some of the accusations towards Barbour of being connected to, shall we say “Old South myths,” but I note he is more vilified than fellow southerner Mike Huckabee as far as potential presidential candidates from the old Confederacy go, so it would obviously only get worse for him as he hit the national campaign trail.

While I am not a political insider, I never thought Barbour had much of a chance at winning the nomination. I figured he would be among the first to bow out once he realized his appeal did not extend beyond the South. Perhaps I should lament Barbour’s withdrawal, but there nothing about the (remote) prospect of him becoming elected that ever excited me in the first place.