Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is expected to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, according to one advisor who told CNN: “We have definitely shifted gears, there is no question about that. He’s running until he says he’s not.”
CNN’s Peter Hamby reports that the same source said Barbour “is doing the things you have to do” to launch a presidential campaign.
Another Republican source told Ben Smith of Politico that Barbour’s team is “putting together a very serious operation” and have already started talking to consultants and setting up fundraisers.
Any Barbour campaign will likely be marred by a recent flap over his praise of a southern white supremacist group that was a force in his home state during the Civil Rights Era. He later backtracked.
