I Forgive Herman Cain, the Only Conservative Left

Being alive means making mistakes. Growing up means understanding that fact, and taking responsibility. Bad actors never take responsibility. Barack Obama honestly believes he's never made a mistake since getting elected; it's one of the few things I think he really means. Honestly.

That's why I kind of like Herman Cain's response to the media thugs. Cain isn't playing their game. I hope he checkmates them, move after move. Never play by their rules. Always set your own rules, or they will kill you. You can see their shotgun victims all over the political landscape.

That's why I magnanimously forgive Herman Cain for whatever his sins might be. I'm not interested, frankly. After Bill Clinton's and John Edwards' abuse of women, I'll forgive any decent man or woman. Got a DUI but went straight? Good on ya, mate. I'll vote for that.

But I will not be voting any time soon for a sociopath with flagrant personality disorders...

...Of course, who am I to forgive anybody? A good question. I will now evade it.

Let me ask you another one: who are the corrupt and dishonest mediots to condemn an honest man and give a free pass to unholy demagogues who are trying to rob you blind?

The media abuse their ideological monopoly every single day of the week, and we all know it. You can't go through an airport without being assaulted by CNN. It's a little like being a peasant in North Korea, with the giant loudspeakers trumpeting over the rice paddies 24/7.

What ultimately is bugging me now and not related to our conversation at all is this: Are these companies doing the accused men a disservice by paying off the women?

The answer is probably "yes" but it's also probably hard to argue against the bottom-line decision of "cheaper to do a quick payoff".

Of course, you then invite more false accusations, which is very likely what happened here. One liar got a payoff and encouraged another liar to step forward.

I 100% believe that Cain is innocent of misbehavior on the actual subject of the "allegations" and I don't CARE about the details.

What I care about is his inexperience as a campaigner. And it's showing. It's showing big time.

He might be getting a lot of campaign contributions, but then again, so did Perry, and Perry's money isn't going to help him and if Cain doesn't straighten up and fly right his money won't help him either, not in the long run.

I am not naive and you are exhibiting the exact thing this aritcle notes.

How old are you? How old are you? Really? How long have you lived in the United States?...Really? Campaigns followed...Really? C’mon you are a better FReeper than that, you’ve been around a long time and I am not a spring chicken here anymore either. None of those questions are pertinent to the discussion as the discussion is not about me.

How many discrimination or harassment cases have you handled in your lifetime? How many times have you had to testify or make statements to lawyers, the EEOC, worker’s compensation and the like? Obviously my previous posts indicate I’ve been around the block with this stuff more than once. How about you? Ever discuss such matters with your HR department or lawyers? Ever have to sit and listen to testimony given in an EEOC office?

I am not saying it would not come out, but I am asking you to consider the issue may not have been in his court to bring it up. He may not have been legally able to out himself. He may have had to wait for someone else to do it.

I provided you with a point by point response to your ‘he should have’ straw argument. All of them reasonable and having a strong probablity of being the legal reasons. You may not like them, but rarely is litagation of any kind likeable.

You are free to stubbornly reject them, but your attack on me personally is uncalled for. There was no right way or wrong way for Cain to handle this issue. If he outed himself the MSM would still be in this frenzy and if you can’t see that...well I can’t help you.

As far as how Cain is acting...you’d have to ask him. I can’t answer for him other than to remind you of what they did to Sarah Palin and her baby. You are correct, this is going to be one of the dirtiest campaigns in our lifetimes and campaign staff not up to the task need to be removed. But with that in mind, in my very first post to this thread, I asked the pertinent question...

Who are we electing and is it perfection of a king, god, or savior? With an election this dirty...looking for perfection in a GOP candidate to pass muster with “them,” is the trap. This article is correct. We are going to have to ‘forgive’ a lot in our candidates...if they are going to win the White House.

Regarding question 1, I would break it down into two parts:

A) Memory: We know he mentioned something to his senate campaign manager, but precision is absent here. I am not sure he said anything other that a general “there’s something out there.” This is important because we now know via the cbs report from the attorney that Cain did not sign settlement documents. The claims were made against the corporation. Cain’s involvement was so minimal as to justify poor or nonexistent memories of the details.

In trial law class at law school, the prof ran us through an experiment where, without telling us it would be important, he rattled off a series of descriptive facts. Then he quizzed us, right then and there, within minutes of the reading. Our performance was abysmal. We didn’t think it was important at the time so we didn’t process it for long term memory. The prof went on to say this is why you have statutes of limitation and other practical measures used to capture event data while it is still hot, because once it grows cold, getting to justice may be impossible.

So holding Cain to a 12 year old event that was exceedingly trivial in his view at the time is inconsistent with the science of memory, and therefore probably grossly unfair.

Tactics. I have represented political clients. In one case I had a client who had a relatively minor drug offense that happened decades ago. You would think that something that actually happened to you of that magnitude would be something you strongly remembered. Not so in this client’s case. So poor was his memory of the event that he asked me to retrieve the court record so he would be ready to answer accurately should the issue be raised.

But did he lead with the negative? No. Politics is sales. You don’t start out selling a product by saying “pay no attention to the scratch on the paint job.” Tactical reasoning would demand that he let someone else bring it up first, especially it he personally viewed it as almost completely trivial.

Block’s failure here was not, I suspect, a lack of awareness, but a lack of imagination. He did not come into this understanding the ingenuity of the left in manufacturing such a potent “bracketing” context from whole cloth. In Cain’s and Block’s view, the events were truly trivial. Every reasonable person would know and accept that.

But the left are battle-hardened propagandists, and are quite good at “bracketing,” the art of taking any random victim and putting them before the public eye in a context of negative emotive associations. It honestly doesn’t matter whether the stories are true or not. The public is being “programmed” to reflexively link “Cain” with “Sexual Harassment,” thus tying him to the negative emotions associated with that.

Understand this for what it is. It is an attack on the enthusiasm gap. People can keep strong positive emotions that drive proactive behavior (like voting) where the basis of that enthusiasm has not been seriously challenged. Reprogram the public to throw some cold water on their own thinking (“we’re stuck with tainted candidate X.”), and you can put a serious dent in the enthusiasm and thus the vote count in the end game.

This is what they did to Palin, aided and abetted by several unworthy persons here on FR. Bracketing is effective. The only defense is a pervasive rejection of the irrational associations. Demand facts. Reverse the bracketing. Change the subject. But above all, don’t let the left control the conversation. As I said with Palin, I’ll say it again here. This is a hill worth dying on. Let them push us into their conditioned reflexes, and the battle is lost. We can’t go there.

As for question 2, I don’t have enough accurate information to comment on it, so I’ll pass on that. Running too long here anyway.

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