Does Sanfords fall = Barbours gain?
That speeds up the leadership hand-off of the RGA — already in the works — to Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi. As Ben Smith of Politico reports, the RGA quickly announced that Barbour would be taking over immediately: “As a former RNC chairman and one of the best governors in the country, no one is better positioned to takeover as RGA chairman than Governor Barbour,” executive director Nick Ayers said in a statement. The announcement comes just as Barbour kicks off a tour of the key primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, fueling speculation about something Facing South covered in May: Barbour’s emergence as a serious contender for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. Sanford’s fall seems to help Barbour in two ways. First, it enables the Mississippi governor to quickly take the reins of the RGA, which has emerged as a key platform for the GOP’s attacks on Obama and Democrat-run Washington. For Barbour, it also removes a key rival in a crowded field of GOP hopefuls eager to clai
