Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour will headline a Republican Party of Iowa fundraiser in late June, fueling speculation the wildly-popular two-term governor may indeed have ambitions for higher officer.

Barbour, 61, will be ineligible to seek another term as governor in 2012, but refuses to speak to his political future, saying only that “You can look for me not to run for re-election.”

He will undoubtedly dismiss the candidate-type activity as inconsequential, as spreading the Republican Gospel, but no politician finds themselves in Iowa — the launch pad of every dark horse candidacy — by pure coincidence.

Considered a highly effective organizer and strategist, Barbour was a key architect of the 1994 Republican revolution as chairman of the Republican National Committee.

In the wake of two consecutive Republican losses, GOP power broker Fred Malek hopes Barbour may yet have some ideas how to recapture the Contract with American spirit. “Extremely sound on policies, clear thinking and the best political strategist” the GOP can boast, Malek wrote on his blog, ranking the governor as the third most likely individual to secure the party nod.

A Barbour candidacy isn’t without its challenges, of course.

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Republican National Committee members today will vote on a resolution to rebrand the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party,” upon the urging of leading conservative members of the committee.

In an email to committee members announcing the resolution, conservative stalwart James Bopp, Jr., said President Obama’s foremost intention is to reengineer the American way of life, and will stop at nothing short of restructuring our society “along socialist ideals.”

Bopp hopes their misguided efforts to rebrand the Democratic Party will serve as a galvanizing point in American politics, not unlike “President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ galvanized opposition to communism.”

Not quite.

Unlike the “Evil Empire,” Republicans lost to the Democratic Party in a fair and free election – the hallmark of American democracy – to the tune of 9,500,000 votes. And then, of course, is the fact that we’re not, say, at war and with mutually-assured destruction looming overhead.

The Democratic Party may well be, as Bopp contends, on a slow, steady march towards Socialism, but passing such a resolution would be a four-minute mile run towards generational oblivion.

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In a brief ceremony at the White House today, President Barack Obama tapped Utah Governor John Huntsman to serve as United States Ambassador to China — his chief envoy to the world’s most populous country.

Reelected in 2008 by a record margin as a moderate Republican in an exceedingly conservative state, party elites and strategists were quick to point to the rising star as a potential challenger to the president.  But given today’s interesting political calculus, the prospect of Huntsman now staging a challenge to Obama is exceptionally low.

Having carved out a reputation as a would-be-modernizer and pragmatic conservative on divisive social issues, Huntsman was right to test the waters. It seems he waded a little too deep for Obama’s comfort, however.

No less than the chief architect of Obama’s campaign David Plouffe has expressed concern over Huntsman’s budding portfolio. While he admits no potential candidate makes him “shake in his shoes,” he concedes the potential of a Huntsman bid leaves him a “wee bit queasy.”

By all accounts, Huntsman stood a good chance at securing the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, if only for the fact that he is the conservative antithesis of Obama: He’s a moderate, young, and attractive politician.  Those are the grounds on which Obama won, and those are the grounds on which they fear he’ll lose it in 2012.

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