How Would Barbour Fare In Iowa?

Chris Cilliza, who blogs at The Fix for the Washington Post, said it best with this statement:

“No matter what Barbour or his people say about the trip, however, always remember the Fix mantra about presidential politics: No politician — we can’t emphasize that strongly enough — goes to Iowa by accident. Doesn’t happen.”

I second that notion. With all do respect to the state of Iowa, I do not think that Barbour is going to check out downtown Des Moines. Although, should he opt to run, Barbour will probably become familiar with every spot in the state and adopt the Hawkeye state as his new home.

This news can lead to dozens of stories that we will cover, but I thought it would be best to start out by looking at hypothetical matchups in Iowa. Of course, this is going to be filled with several assumptions, and things are going to change between now and January 2012, but I will look at this from today’s standpoint.

Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee look to be sure things to run again in 2012. Huckabee won Iowa in 2008 by camping out there for a year, reaching out and appealing to conservative Christians; and was able to overtake Mitt Romney who had poured a great amount of money and resources into the state. For the interest of this piece, I will say that potential heavyweights such as Newt Gingrich, Mark Sanford, Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal opt not to run. Several other smaller candidates will run, but I will call Barbour, Romney, and Huckabee the top three guys in the race for this story. Romney and Huckabee have the advantage of campaigning in Iowa before and not having a day job. The two of them have continued to come back to the state to make speeches, and already have a lot of ground support.

Barbour, on the other hand, is governor until January 2012, which is when the caucus takes places. He would effectively have to take a leave of absence (similar to McCain, Obama, and Clinton) for a year or more to build roots. Iowa is about the ground game. On the Democrat side, they have the labor unions and the Republicans have religious conservatives. Barbour should be able to effectively court that group which went for Huckabee last time around.

While Huckabee’s strength seems to be ground support from conservatives, Romney can counter with the money. Barbour is legendary for raising money, and should he decide to jump in, I imagine he would have the donors lined up and would be ready to compete financially with any Republican in the field.

Iowa involves eating at the local diners, giving speeches at county fairs in front of 75 people, and shaking as many hands as possible. Prior to Barbour’s run for governor in 2003, he went on a similar tour of the Magnolia State, and he would need to replicate that in Iowa.

Barbour has high name recognition and respect among party insiders, but not with the general public. I believe that is his biggest obstacle right now, but obviously there is plenty of time to make up for that.