Barbour y Daniels esperarán hasta abril-mayo

Los Gobernadores Haley Barbour (Mississippi) y Mitch Daniels (Indiana) aprovecharon la conferencia de la RGA para charlar con los reporteros sobre sus planes presidenciales. Coincidieron en señalar abril-mayo como fecha para el anuncio de candidaturas, en caso de producirse.

Mitch Daniels:

(...) "I'm going to spend the next five to six months effecting another round of big reforms in our state. We've got a great opportunity to do some things we haven't gotten to do yet," added Daniels, who governs a state where Republicans just took over the state House. "Maybe in a spare moment along the line I'll think about it." (...)

Haley Barbour:

(...) "I don't feel any time pressure. I have a responsibility to the citizens of Mississippi. We have a legislative session with a very tough budget and I'm going to fulfill my responsibility," Barbour said. Asked whether he was considering the race, Barbour conceded: "I am. And my family, we have begun to talk about it, and some people whose opinions I respect. But I haven't asked anybody to sit down and kind of lay out what a budget would be and a timeline."

(...) "Once a person becomes a candidate or perceived as a candidate, if that person isn't dedicating the vast majority of his or her time to running, then it actually hurts them. So I'm not going to make a decision to run until I both decide that I should do it, and I'm prepared to pretty well go most if not full-time from that point forward," he said.

(...) "This is all-consuming, somebody running for president of the United States. Running is the easy part. If you get it, you're talking about all-consuming. Do you want to give ten years of your life? Because you have to be prepared to do that," Barbour said. "You have to be prepared to run, win and serve two terms. Whether you end up succeeding or not, you have to be prepared to do that, and that's a very big commitment. You know, I'm 63 years old. So I'd spend the rest of my useful life essentially doing nothing but this. There's a lot to think about, because if you do it you owe the country to be in whole hog." (...)

Barbour también tuvo buenas palabras para el Gobernador Palenty (Minnesota):

(...) Barbour also told reporters Thursday he was happy he had chosen Pawlenty as vice chairman of the RGA. Pawlenty's tenure, Barbour said, would help if the Minnesotan decides to go forward with a White House bid.

"My belief was that he was thinking about running for president. To run for president, you've really got to learn to raise money. But the Minnesota campaign finance laws are such that the governor of Minnesota never really had much opportunity to raise money. And so I appointed him to this because I thought it would be good for him if he decided to run, but I also thought he had every incentive to go out and raise a bunch of money for us so he'd learn how, and we'd be the beneficiary of that. And I turned out to be right, he raised a bunch of money for us," Barbour said. "I was proud of myself." (...)