Posted on 10/03/2011 6:42:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Is Herman Cain a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination? It’s a question no one in the pundit world was asking until the past week.
Cain has never held public office. When he ran for the Senate in Georgia in 2004, he lost the primary by a 52 percent to 26 percent margin.
He has zero experience in foreign or defense policy, where presidents have the most leeway to set policy. When questioned about the Middle East earlier this year, he clearly had no idea what the “right of return” is.
His solid performance in the Fox News/Google debate on September 22 didn’t get pundits to take his chances seriously.
Neither did his 37 percent to 15 percent victory over Rick Perry in the Florida straw poll on September 24. That was taken as a response to Perry’s weak debate performance and a tribute to Cain for showing up and speaking before the 2,657 people who voted.
But Republicans around the nation seem to have responded the same way. The Fox News poll conducted September 25–27 showed Cain with 17 percent of the vote — a statistically significant jump from the 5 percent he had been averaging in polls taken in previous weeks.
And a SurveyUSA poll of Florida Republicans conducted September 24–27 showed Cain trailing Mitt Romney by only 27 percent to 25 percent — a statistical tie. That’s very different from the Florida polls conducted by Public Policy Polling from September 22 to September 25 and Quinnipiac from September 14 to September 19, both of which showed Cain with 7 percent.
We will see whether other national or state polls show Cain with a similar surge. If so, then there’s a real possibility that Cain could win enough primaries and caucuses to be a real contender.
That possibility is already being taken seriously by the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger. Henninger argued in a September 29 column that Cain’s success in business — he engineered turnarounds in Burger King’s Philadelphia stores and at Godfather’s Pizza nationally — made him a plausible candidate.
“Unlike the incumbent,” Henninger wrote, “Herman Cain has at least twice identified the causes of a large failing enterprise, designed goals, achieved them and by all accounts inspired the people he was supposed to lead.”
Cain’s business success, his “9-9-9” tax plan, his generally conservative stands on issues, the YouTube clip showing him debating Bill Clinton on health care in 1994 — all of these help account for his apparent surge in the polls.
But I suspect there are a couple of other factors. One is likeability. Romney’s attempts at ingratiation are awkward, and Perry’s charm is lost on most non-Texans. But Cain is, as The Atlantic’s liberal analyst Chris Good concedes, “undeniably likeable.”
Another thing going for him is race. White conservatives like to hear black candidates who articulate their views and will vote for them: Check out Rep. Tim Scott of Charleston, S.C.
In this, white conservatives resemble white liberals, who liked hearing Barack Obama articulate their views and were ready to vote for him, too. This is what Joe Biden was getting at with his awkward 2007 comment that Obama was a “clean” black candidate.
White moderates are ready to support black candidates, too, as Obama showed in the 2008 general election.
Cain claims that he could get one-third of the black vote in a general election. There’s no way to rigorously test that.
But it finds some support in Scott Rasmussen’s polls, which have been regularly pitting ten current or possible candidates against Obama. Rasmussen finds Romney ahead by 2 percent and Chris Christie trailing by 1 percent. The other candidate among the three closest to Obama, trailing by 5 percent, is Cain.
Moreover, Cain holds Obama to the lowest share of the vote, 39 percent, of any of the ten Republicans. That may be because some black voters desert Obama when Cain is the opponent.
Further support can be found in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, where Scott won with 65 percent of the vote in 2010 in a district where John McCain won just 56 percent and where 20 percent of the population is black. No other Republican freshmen in the Old South ran so far ahead of McCain.
All this speculation may be getting far ahead of the facts. Cain still has significant liabilities as a candidate and could make a disqualifying mistake anytime. But he’s beginning to look like a contender.
— Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor, and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
Beginning to look like one? He’s had my vote since day one.
Recently, Cain was asked if his lack of political experience qualifies him for President. I loved his response, which in essence was: "Ninety-two percent of the elected officials in Washington are sitting for their second or more term. Clearly, there's plenty of experience in the current Congress. How's that workin' out for you?"
People everywhere he goes react to that statement with standing ovations and cheers - which tells me they are just fine with a non-career politician. :-)
He was looking like contender till he jumped into racial politics this weekend. Cooled me off quite a bit on his viability.
I, too have been impressed with Cain from the beginning. However, I thought he would be this election cycle's "Duncan Hunter"; the guy freepers like but cannot get any traction. Herman does seem to be getting some traction. It's good to see a guy like Barone take notice.
Anyone who saw him on Fox News Sunday yesterday already knows the answer to that.
Mr Cain would be an honored guest at my house.
The Obamaloon - should he even think of being close to my family - could stay in the barn where he belongs.
Should Cain be the nominee, he’s got my vote.
I missed that. What did he say? I've heard him address racial questions in the past and his answers have always been honest, sincere and conservative...
Cain is not a contender and never will be. He hasn't got anything like the campaign organization and institutional support it takes to make a serious bid for a major party presidential nomination. Most election cycles have a no hoper or two who make a splash for a time. Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, and Michelle Bachmann all had their moments in the sun. None of them ever had a chance to win, and Cain doesn't either.
He looks like a contender right now because the bulk of the party is unwilling to face our binary choice between Romney and Perry, yet. Before anyone votes, that binary choice will be clear even to the dimmest among us. Very few actual voters are going to support a talk show host when push comes to shove. Cain's candidacy will go the way of Robertson's and Buchanan's, having even less impact.
Most of us will grumble about our constrained choice, and then select from the realistic options and Cain isn ‘t one of those options.
we switched from perry to cain.
I like Mr. Cain more every time I hear what he has to say. His lack of experience in foreign policy is the only downside I can think of. VEEP maybe?
TC
Cain went after Perry for being a racist on one of the Sunday shows because of a rock at some hunting cabin 30 years ago.
Here is something on the topic.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2787088/posts
Oh crap. That’s really, really disappointing!
Not to be a site nanny, but wasn’t this just posted?
Anyway to repeat what I said on the previous thread, Cain is just the new fad, and indicative of the fact that no one in the race so far has really grabbed the fancy of the public.
Those who did so at first sank themselves with some unfortunate comments during the debates.
But, speaking of the race, or rather race, how far will Cain go to get that 30% of the black vote he (mistakenly) thinks he will get?
His over-reaction to the question about the stupid Washington Post article about a rock on a ranch that Perry went to occasionally really makes me wonder about him. It seemed like pandering.
If something actually racially biased came up, I would expect him to react, of course, but this jumping the gun over nothing.
Well, I gotta say ... he was third on my list but now he’s off it altogether.
Ditto. He had me with his business experience and his pro-america stance against the evil do-ers.
I agree.
The Washington Post set out to destroy one conservative: Perry, and may have ended up destroying two: Cain.
As far as Perry goes, this whole incident has sparked a little favorable feeling for him because this attack was so stupid and unfair.
VEEP to who, one of those well known foreign policy experts Romney and Perry?
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.