Posted on 08/10/2003 5:35:44 PM PDT by Engine82
POLITICS: Raising Cain Herman Cain, candidate for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, may be the national Democratic Party's worst nightmare.
Cain has been described as a Ronald Reagan clone. The first words on his Web site are: "People make better decisions about their lives than government." A former adviser to Jack Kemp and Steve Forbes, he favors low taxes. He wants to privatize Social Security. He would scrap income taxes, replacing them with a national sales tax.
The most obvious difference between him and Reagan is that Cain is an American of African descent, and that presents a dilemma for Democrats.
Zell Miller is retiring. Democrats need to hold that seat if they are to have any chance of winning control of the Senate next year -and that will be difficult if many blacks bolt the party to support Cain.
Of course, Cain isn't assured of getting the GOP nomination. He isn't yet well known and his three opponents include the popular U.S. Rep. Johnny Isakson, whose record is as conservative as Cain's rhetoric.
Still, Cain has an agenda certain to resonate with Georgia voters -and, as a regular on the motivational speaking circuit, he obviously has some skills that could be helpful during the campaign.
Cain would be an excellent role model if he goes to Capitol Hill -a chauffeur's son who got an education, worked hard to prove himself competent and, as a CEO, nursed a failing Godfather's Pizza back to health.
Married 34 years, and holding a master's degree and seven honorary doctorates, Cain serves on the boards of four major corporations and is the author of three books. He consistently stresses that people can be whatever they want and insists that, as a senator, he would work to remove government-imposed barriers to success.
More importantly, the Democratic Party increasingly has sacrificed the interests of blacks -whom it considers a "safe" voting bloc -in recent years to gain the favor of various monied special interest groups. Polls show most blacks favor private school vouchers, for example, but the party's leadership steadfastly opposes them.
If elected, Cain could use his high-profile job to help make minorities aware of other ways that the party fails them.
When asked why he, being black, favored giving workers more control over their Social Security money, Cain noted that the life expectancy of a black male is 68 -seven years younger than a white man.
"If you work 40 years putting money into Social Security and die at 68," he explained, "you have subsidized white males, have no ownership of your contributions and can't pass (them) on to your children and grandchildren."
Generally speaking, the conservative agenda better serves the interests of most Americans of any race on such issues as criminal justice, taxes and welfare, as well as education. Cain would be an effective spokesman for that agenda.
Grow up. Your ideology must be tempered with reality. SS is not going away now or in any forseable future no matter what you think of it. Yes, much of it is income redistribution, but the people as a whole think it is just grand. It's the 10,000 pound elephant in domestic politics and if you want politicians to just say they want to end it, you are supporting losers. If you really want to change it, it has to be done incrementally and partial privatization is the first step in doing that.
Sorry if reality does not meet your ideological purity standard, but it is reality none-the-less. Just grow up and get used to it and quit savaging people on your side of the fence.
Moderator: Is it possible for someone to do that to someone else?
I am a big Cain fan and I really delighted to see him run. When people get to see him in action I don't think it will be too long before the words "Herman Cain" and "America's first (truly) black President" show up in the same sentence. This guy could wow any Freeper gathering with his style and most of all his CONTENT.
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