Barbour apologizes after calling Obama's policies 'tar babies'

Haley Barbour called President Barack Obama’s policies “tar babies” on a post-election conference call for clients of his lobbying firm, two sources familiar with the call told POLITICO.

The former Mississippi governor made the remark as he was taking questions from 100 or more clients of the BGR Group during an hourlong call on Thursday morning. According to a person on the call, Barbour was noting how rare it is for Americans to elect a president from the same party as a commander-in-chief leaving office after two terms.


“And then he said there is no one who will run for president who will endorse Obama’s issues, because Obama’s issues are ‘tar babies.’”

Barbour, in an email to POLITICO, acknowledged making the comment.

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“If someone takes offense, I regret it. But, again, neither the context nor the connotation was intended to offend,” wrote Barbour, who is known for his political savvy, but whose folksy Southern style has occasionally drawn allegations of insensitivity on fraught racial and cultural issues.

The term “tar baby” is often used to describe a sticky situation. In 19th century popular fiction, the “Tar-Baby” was a doll made of tar and turpentine used to entangle Br’er Rabbit.

But it has also been used at times in the past as a racial slur, according to Random House. When political figures have invoked it in recent years, there has been disagreement about how racially charged the term is.

“The Oxford American Dictionary defines the term as ‘a difficult problem, that’s only aggravated by attempts to solve it.’ This is exactly what I meant and the context in which I used the term,” wrote Barbour, who cofounded BGR after serving as Reagan’s White House political director, and before chairing the Republican National Committee.

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“In the Q and A portion of the call, there was a discussion about whether Democrats will run from or embrace the President’s policies and record in 2016. I replied that once candidates embraced the President’s policies and record they will be stuck with them — no matter how unpopular they are. Hence the literary reference.”

Other politicians have found themselves in hot water for using the term “tar baby.” Mitt Romney used it to describe Boston’s “Big Dig” project in 2006 and subsequently apologized. As John McCain campaigned for president the following year, he was criticized for using the term when answering a question at an Iowa town hall meeting about federal involvement in child custody cases. He subsequently said he was “wrong” to use it.

And in 2011, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) compared Obama and his policies to a tar baby.

“Now, I don’t even want to be associated with him. It’s like touching a, a tar baby and you get it,” Lamborn said. The congressman apologized, saying he only meant that the president’s policies amounted to an economic “quagmire” for the country.

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When Barbour was considering his own potential 2012 presidential campaign, he came under scrutiny for kind words about the Citizens Councils in his home town of Yazoo during the civil rights era.

“Up north they think it was like the KKK,” he told the Weekly Standard in a profile of him. “Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”

Barbour also said he didn’t “remember it as being that bad” and recalled going to see Martin Luther King Jr. speak in 1962.

Barbour subsequently clarified that he wasn’t saying the town leadership were saints, either.

“Their vehicle, called the ‘Citizens Council,’ is totally indefensible, as is segregation,” he said.