Barbour: Purity ‘not a winner in politics’

Electing a Republican in 2012 is more important than nominating an ideologically pure candidate, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) said this weekend.

Barbour, one of the handful of Republican elected officials considering a run for president in 2012, said that GOP unity was essential, and that requiring ideological purity in the party’s nominee could produce a losing candidate against President Obama.

{mosads}”The main thing is to elect a Republican president in 2012,” Barbour said in a video interview with the conservative magazine Human Events posted on Monday. “It’s why we all need to work together — that unity is what we need that’ll help us win, and that purity is not a winner in politics.”

Barbour made the potentially provocative remark at this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the yearly gathering of conservative activists, at which many possible 2012 GOP candidates sought to prove their ideological bona fides.

Indeed, the theme of ideological purity versus electability is one that plagued Republicans in 2010. A number of candidates recruited and backed by establishment Republicans to run in House and Senate races lost primary battles against more ideologically pure conservative candidates, many of whom were backed by the Tea Party movement. Some Republicans blamed the ascendancy of those candidates for the party’s underperformance in races for Senate and governor.

The internal tug-of-war over electability and purity is set to play out again in 2012. Already, veteran lawmakers like Sens. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) are preparing for aggressive primary challenges, and elements of the debate have crept into the presidential campaign, too.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R), one possible presidential candidate, called for a “truce” on social issues. That notion drew a rebuke from former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), another possible candidate who’s regarded as especially socially conservative.

Barbour’s own candidacy could be aided by a diminished emphasis on purity, especially amid new questions on Monday about whether he’d sought a limited amnesty plan for illegal immigrants during his work as a lobbyist.

The Mississippi governor, who is regarded as one of the party’s top strategists and who led the Republican Governors Association (RGA) in 2010, said the reality was that the GOP wouldn’t be able to advance its goals unless it beats Obama in 2012.

“ObamaCare cannot be repealed as long as Obama is president,” he said. “Our policies in many other areas — spending reductions, reducing debt, lower taxes — none of these policies can be put into effect as long as Obama is president.”