Posted on 10/07/2011 8:43:16 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Today, the Susan B. Anthony list and National Organization for marriage released a joint scorecard for the Republican candidates for President at the annual Values Voters Summit. Ordinarily, a release like this carries few surprises, and in this election cycle so dominated by fiscal issues, a scorecard devoted to gay marriage and abortion is unlikely to carry the same weight it would have in the past. However, what may surprise those perusing the score card this time around is the fact that one candidate – the one widely interpreted as the most conservative in the race – actually falls to the Left of most of his peers on both issues.
That candidate is Herman Cain. According to the scorecard, Cain, who many have interpreted as a Huckabee-style populist outsider, looks more like Ross Perot when social issues are discussed. On abortion, Cain is one of only two candidates who have refused to sign the Susan B. Anthony’s pro-Life pledge, a pledge which asks candidates to “commit to key pro-Life goals if elected to the Presidency in 2012.” The other candidate who has refused to sign is (unsurprisingly) former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, whose record on abortion is famously confused. However, Cain still ends up to the Right of Romney in the aggregate on the issue, given that Romney is the only candidate to refuse to make it a priority to appoint pro-Life appointees to Executive Branch offices if elected.
It is on gay marriage where Cain takes more liberties. In fact, on gay marriage, he appears indistinguishable from Libertarian Rep. Ron Paul. Cain has refused to sign the Pro-Marriage Pledge, refused to support the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment, and has “Unknown stances” on every other issue the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) scores, other than defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, which every GOP candidate is on record supporting. In contrast, candidates like Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and even Mitt Romney have openly said “Yes” to every question asked by NOM.
Given that Cain is perceived as the conservative standard bearer who has eclipsed more socially conventional candidates like Rick Perry, this raises an important question: Is Cain actually conservative enough for his support base, or are social issues actually in their twilight years?
I’ve never misrepresented anything about Cain and you cannot show me where I have.
“But he’s not J. H. Christ.”
Who is J. H. Christ?
I think the action listed above by Free Republic is more the enough answer for any intellectually honest social conservative Freeper.
Sadly, everyone of these Cain attack threads progress the same way. Perry supporters put out lies and misleading information. They are proven wrong (again and again) with facts.
Then they start with conspiracies. Then they regress to attacking the candidate and their supporters. It is desperation.
He didn’t sign the pledge because of the wording. He wouldn’t sign a pledge he couldn’t not constitutionally keep. He even encouraged them to re-word it. That is character and honesty. He has stated more than once his is pro life and Pro-marriage.
The only questions this raises is why is SBA asking politicians to sign pledges for unconstitutional acts.
The answer to that is here and here.
I would also like an explanation of his policy regarding the appointment of judges.
The addition to your thread is out of line.
We've had two black Supreme Court justices. Using altura's 'logic', Clarence Thomas should have been just like Thurgood Marshall. Instead, Thomas is the most consistently principled conservative on that court.
The Moderator put it.
Cain’s complaint is squishy at best, and it isn’t about being unconstitutional, or the man hasn’t a sense at all about what is constitutional.
There are plenty of ways a president can further the agenda of life without. To pretend that the meaning is the president will legislate is to violate common sense and the English language.
It’s pure slicksterism (or pure stupidity) on Cain’s part and this whole thing NOW pisses me off.
Do you think Pissant would be for Perry? I dion’t. He was a Hunter man, so he would be a Cain man, too.
Gonna be a long primary season.
I suspect that Cain said that so that people would view him as a PRESIDENTIAL candidate and not just as somebody conservative who could be Perry’s VP. Newt Gingrich has positioned himself as a willing VP candidate for whoever the GOP nominates. If Cain did the same he would be consigning himself to be just a lower-tier candidate who is really in the running for VP.
But when you think about it, what Cain seems to be saying is that if the GOP goes RINO (by nominating Romney) he would still be willing to be a conservative VP to run with Romney and balance out the ticket so that Romney would have a chance to beat Obama. If Romney was nominated and chose a non-conservative VP lots of people would stay home. And if all the conservative candidates refuse to be a VP for Romney we can be pretty sure that Romney would have no chance of beating Obama (which means the Obama people - such as Frum - will be pushing REALLY hard to get Romney as the candidate, just like they pushed really hard to get McCain as the candidate last time).
The same problem wouldn’t necessarily exist if Perry was the nominee, although Cain might believe that if Perry is the nominee his debating skills would make him hopeless to beat Obama anyway. Perry is great at bringing in money but it would be hard to buy an election - especially in this already anti-establishment climate - if he shoots himself in the foot in debates and/or speeches by stuff like calling those against in-state tuition for illegals “heartless”. Nor does it seem like Romney should be able to buy an election when he makes statements like “Coal production kills people”. But Romney would have the media pulling for him in the primary because he’s the liberal in the race.
He wouldn’t have the media pulling for him in the general though, and in the general I don’t think either Perry or Romney-without-a-strong-conservative-VP could beat Obama. I think Cain knows that.
Cain supporters are the new punching bags for the Perry lovers.
It’s pure slicksterism (or pure stupidity) on Cain’s part and this whole thing NOW pisses me off.
- - - -
No it isn’t. I read it and I wouldn’t have signed it either, and MrR said the same thing and we are both very much pro-life advocates. It is POORLY written.
Cain has stated several times he is pro-life. This article is trash, period.
pissant posted so many threads about Hunter that it turned a lot of FReepers against Hunter. Then pissant took to posting anti Palin threads and comments so out of line that it eventually crossed that line.
Well, if that is his position, then he misunderstands the role of the Executive. Although the president cannot vote in Congress, the president can push legislation through congress. He can meet and confer with representatives and push whatever agenda he has. He can draft and submit legislation to congress for consideration.
If Cain doesn't believe the president has the authority to "advance" legislation, then what good will he be as president??????? Who is going to "advance" the Cain agenda if not Cain?????
If that was his "excuse" for not signing the pro-life pledge, then I have to question his commitment to the pro-life cause.
I haven’t said that you have misrepresented Cain’s position. But the article in this thread does so, blatantly. I have no problem with what you’re saying because you acknowledge that Cain IS pro-life and pro-marriage. That’s totally different than the slanderous misrepresentations in the article.
And you said that you don’t read links. How many people don’t see anything beyond the title of an article, and then what that title said sits in their mind as if it was the truth? Putting the barf alert on articles that are clearly libelous misrepresentations is necessary for that reason.
As I said, I don’t sit firmly in either the Perry or the Cain camp at the moment, but if clearly libelous articles are posted in behalf of Perry it is a big turn-off. So this thread has actually pushed me closer to Cain than I was before. Still have to think through the issues, but this behavior does make me question the accuracy of what comes out in support of Perry from now on.
And the president nominates Supreme Court Justices.
Why is this thread a barf alert?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.