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.
“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.”
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