“Yes We Cain” Turns Into “Maybe We Shouldn't”
2012 GOP Presidential hopeful Herman Cain told his supporters on Tuesday that he is reassessing his campaign after Ginger White announced to the world that she had had an almost 13-year apparent pay-for-play sexual affair with him. After weathering numerous accusations of sexual harassment going back a decade or so, the Cain Train looks like it will be derailed over this [alleged] long-term adulterous affair. When politicians say they are “reassessing” their campaign, that usually means they either want to gauge the possibilities of debunking these latest accusations…or whether they can still get the needed financial support to make a serious run for president in 2012. Let’s face it, without millions of dollars in campaign contributions in today’s political climate the candidate is dead in the water. That is just the nature of the beast, as in the American political arena of today.
While the mainstream media operatives are quick to jump on the “Cain’s campaign is dead” bandwagon, there are other more viable reasons that point to why the Cain Train seemed to be running out of track recently. Special hat tip goes out to Erick Erickson of redstate.com, who explained some hard truths about Herman Cain’s campaign problems in today’s Morning Briefing:
In the past 24 hours, I’ve had a lot of people ask why so many Herman Cain supporters would abandon him over this adultery allegation and not the harassment stuff. Well, it’s because people didn’t really believe the harassment stuff. But what’s more, a lot of these same people are wondering why people would jump from Cain over this adultery stuff to Gingrich who is on his third wife, having cheated on Wife 1 with Wife 2 and cheated on Wife 2 with Wife 3.
A caller to my radio show last night summed it up better and more succinctly than me. He said it was not the adultery. After all, we are all sinners. We all like sheep have gone astray. What it is is the incompetence of the Cain campaign’s handling of these several stories. The caller’s voice quivered with anger. He was angry at Herman. He felt betrayed, not because of what Herman may or may not have done, but because this caller backed Herman as the man who could run America and fix its problems, when in reality he can’t even run a campaign and fix his campaign problems.That’s why, as Herman falls, Newt rises. Written off for dead by many, including me, he has been able to fix his problems in a way Cain has not.
As Erick points out, Cain’s campaign has proven to be fairly incompetent at critical times, leading many to speculate as to whether he is actually making a serious run, or whether his campaign is all just a charade to sell books and gain notoriety. From Cain’s campaign chief smoking in a TV ad, to the ill-timed announcements his staff have made that seem to contradict Cain statements afterward, one must draw the conclusion that Herman Cain did not pick his campaign staff very well right from the beginning. That leads us to make a very crucial observation: If Herman Cain can’t even pick out effective, viable primary campaign staffers, just who could we expect him to install in his cabinet if elected POTUS?
When evaluating Herman Cain on leadership qualities alone, he has also shown a propensity to be ill-prepared as the debates have ratcheted up to include serious topics, such as Foreign policy and entitlement reform. Cain being a career businessman, [as opposed to a career politician] has gotten him a pass in the early debates on serious questions. There is no excuse for a GOP Presidential candidate that proves time and time again that he not only lacks experience, but has also refused to put in the effort to study up on any proposed policy reforms needed to get this country turned around. This became blatantly evident when Cain and Gingrich held a one on one sit-down about a month ago, where Cain deferred to Gingrich on almost every question he was asked in saying, “ I’ll let you take that one Newt.” Cain simply could not answer how he would effectively solve America’s problems without letting Gingrich take the lead, and then expounding on Newt’s answers.
To the very informed GOP Primary voters, this was the beginning of the Cain Train derailment, and rightfully so. Whether the sexual harassment allegations were blown out of proportion by the media or not, (and they were) all of that really didn’t matter when the public was exposed to Mr. Cain’s shortcomings on viable conservative policy-making decisions and planning, along with his poor debate performances. With the [alleged] Ginger White long-term adulterous pay for play sexual affair coming to light, it looks like the Cain Train will just be derailed sooner than was inevitable, simply due to his actual lack of true conservative policy-making knowledge that is oh-so-evident today, if we just look at it closely enough. Taking into account all of the above information, we can certainly expect to see the Cain Train pull out of the GOP Presidential candidacy station for the last time in the next few days, and sadly so. Herman Cain has brought a new level of enthusiasm and a refreshing batch of quips and quotes that was sorely lacking in the GOP primary contests of years gone by. The only real question left is whether he will gracefully put his enthusiastic support behind Newt Gingrich’s campaign, or do a complete about-face and support the GOP establishment candidate Mitt Romney. Only time will tell.
2012 just can’t get here fast enough!
I can’t believe anyone would disagree with this.
You know, back when Cain was ridin the wave, he did some really brilliant things, but his explanations were terrible. For instance the campaign ad showing his campaign manager smoking. He allowed himself to get crucified by Bob Schiefer (sp) on his Sunday show, when ole’Bob came unglued over it. Instead of making a strong point that smoking is legal, and “images” of people smoking occur everyday in real life, Herman rolled over and did everything except apologize while laying on his back. Leading me to question his ability. Obviously, in the Cain camp there must have been discussion that scene would stir controversy, the fact Cain had no response for criticism was very disappointing.