Afternoon Fix: Haley Barbour didn’t think he could beat Obama

Haley Barbour didn’t think he could beat Obama, Reince Priebus thinks there could be more candidates, Heath Shuler has a primary opponent, and town halls are heating up.

Make sure to sign up to get "Afternoon Fix" in your e-mail inbox every day by 5 (ish) p.m.!

EARLIER ON THE FIX:

Ron Paul forming exploratory committee for possible presidential run

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’s truce put to the test

Hector Balderas joins New Mexico Senate race

Obama’s gas price problem

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

* Haley Barbour didn’t think he could beat Obama, Michael Isikoff reports. The Mississippi governor "wanted to run, he would have loved it,” according to a source, and thought he could win the nomination by running as the conservative alternative to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. But he thought his own baggage would weigh him down too much in the general. There were two camps in his team: one that thought he should run, one that thought he shouldn’t.

* Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus suggested today that there could be some new entrants into the presidential pool. ”We don’t know who’s going to be in the race," he said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. “Perhaps some others that we aren’t talking about might get in the race ... I don’t know who those people are. But I have a good sense that we’ll have plenty to choose from.”

* Strategist Joe Trippi has joined Democratic activist Bob Massie’s Massachusetts campaign against Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). Trippi is best known for his work on Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. City Year co-founder Alan Khazei also announced today that he was running against Brown.

* P.J. Crowley, the former State Department spokesperson who quit after calling the miltary’s treatment of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid,” has landed at Penn State’s law school. He has a one-year posting as the Omar Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership.

WHAT YOU SHOULDN’T MISS:

* Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was booed at another town hall today, but it was Florida Rep. Dan Webster (R) who faced “bedlam” over Medicare changes when he met with his constituents. Some attendees were so raucous, they were scolded by a police officer. Democrats in Wisconsin are encouraging supporters to attend more of Ryan’s town halls. Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner appeared to distance himself from Ryan’s budget plan today, saying, “Other people have other ideas.  I'm not wedded to one single idea.”

* Former Missouri GOP chair Ann Wagner is moving towards a House campaign, suggesting that Rep. Todd Akin (R) will run for Senate and she will run for his seat. In an announcement on her website, Wagner says she’s launching an exploratory committee for "a possible race for Congress in the likely event Missouri's Second Congressional District becomes an open seat in 2012." Akin would join a crowded but somewhat lackluster GOP field to take on Sen. Claire McCaskill (D).

* Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) has a 2012 primary opponent — Asheville Councilman Cecil Bothwell, who was originally planning to run for the seat as an independent. There was a minor controversy over Bothwell in 2009, when his opponents argued that his atheism barred him from serving under the state constitution.

* Olympic track star Carl Lewis (D) is not eligible to run for state Senate in New Jersey, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno has ruled. The Republican official says Lewis does not meet the state’s four-year residency requirement. Democrats are expected to appeal the decision, which is fueling controversy over whether the lieutenant governor’s office should oversee the Division of Elections.

THE FIX MIX:

Easter is over, time to decimate your Cadbury eggs:

With Aaron Blake