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.
RE: Of course he isn’t. But if he is naive enough to fall for that trick from the media, he is too naive to successfully run
Need we be reminded that he successfully turned around two failed franchises to make them profitable again and was at the forefronf of the battle against Hillarycare ( which eventually stopped it )? That’s being naive?
I am not comparing the standing of thje two, but I think, it goes tot he heart of the attitude we all have when it comes to pur candidates -— WE ANTT THEM TO BE PERFECT IN EVERY WAY, KNOWING THAT THEY ARE NOT. If Ronald Reagan made mistakes in his career ( and they were plenty ), Herman Cain will also.
Ron Paul wins straw polls all the time. He's never going to be President. Michelle Bachmann won the Ames poll by a wide margin, and promply dropped from view. Lots of candidates have done well in polls for a while but failed to sustain a competitive campaign. Cain is fated to be one of them.
Candidates don't win nominations any more than quarterbacks win conference titles. It takes takes a team to win a title and it takes an elaborate campaign apparatus to win a major party nomination. Cain hasn't got one and can't get one. To build the requisite apparatus you need to be a major political player for years. Cain doesn't qualify. Game Over.
That's why nobody remotely comparable to Herman Cain has ever been either the Republican or Democrat nominee for President in anything resembling modern times. Every nominee has been a major political player before they ran for President. Even Wendell Wilke was a prominent Roosevelt critic before 1940. Besides, he only got the GOP nod because, with war breaking out, the Republican establishment wouldn't put forward an isolationist which ruled out Senators Vandenburg and Taft. The only other candidate, 38 year old Manhattan DA Thomas E. Dewey, was even less established as a political player than Wilke. Wendell Wilke was a last resort. With Romney and Perry in the race, Cain won't have that advantage and without that advantage his campaign is going nowhere.
I realize this is a bitter truth. Cain makes an attractive political fantasy, but it is just a fantasy. Have your fun for a little while, but we have to return to reality soon.
Romney or Perry, take your pick.
“Bitter Truth”
You think pretty highly of your opinions!!! LOL
I guess time will tell :-)
You’re speaking of Palin and Rubio, I guess.
Well, I will make a choice but it won’t be Cain.
The MSM has so much to jump on him about but I planned to ignore it.
However, this racist thing has totally put me off the fellow. Sorry, maybe it’s petty, but I don’t think so.
I think it’s far more important than the tuition for illegals or the gardisal thing.
He’s just revealed himself as black first and willing to pander to that segment of the population even though it means making an unfair slam on a fellow republican.
First off, I am a Santorum guy. He doesn't get involved in race hustling. Secondly, it is going to hurt Cain. If this is his tactic to move up in the polls, I am not interested and I'm sure I am not the only one. Cain seems insistent on saying stupid stuff. Remember the whole muslim thing and the lame apology? This is a straight up economy election. That is the only thing he should be focused on right now. GOP base voters have been pretty clear on that.
The drama! Please. Everyone knows you never supported Cain.
You’ve just found a talking point to use is all. I’m a white woman and I find the term offensive.
If the land had been titled “b*tch-head” and he said it was insensitive to women, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Cain was merely expressing his opinion, not pandering. Pandering is when a candidate calls his base heartless because they don’t want to pay tuition for illegals.
Until yesterday, Cain was the ONLY candidate for me. I’ll wait and see how he deals with this.
Well, sure. But I hope that Cain will learn from his mistakes, as Reagan did. And the first step is to be made aware of the mistake.
I know that pointing out Cain's error here will hurt him, and I regret that. But it will do no one any good if we all just look the other way and pretend it didn't happen, or if we just blame the interviewer.
All politicians, even the ones we like, must be held accountable. The trick is to hold your favorites accountable without damaging them too much in the process.
“Well, I will make a choice but it won’t be Cain.”
So you’re a Perry supporter then?
I’m sorry you feel hurt that Cain isn’t pandering to you.
I don’t expect Cain to pander to me. But I don’t want him to pander to political correctness or to the 30% of the black vote he thinks he can get.
I was all out for Cain — admittedly as my third choice — until he did this on Sunday.
Unforgiveable.
Hobbits for Herman!
“I was all out for Cain — admittedly as my third choice”
Somehow I don’t believe you. I wonder why.
Anyways, I’m sorry Cain doesn’t pander to you, because I’m sure that’s his top priority in an election campaign.
Everyone knows that I never supported Cain? That’s interesting in view of the fact that I did support him.
What in the world do you think the term, ‘n-head’ means?
It doesn’t make any sense as a possible reference to a person of color.
It has been plainly explained as a reference to the common name for a wildflower that grew profusely in Texas ... still does but with another name.
I am not having a conversation with you, as you suggest, because you haven’t listened to a word I’ve typed.
The B word (which I’ve actually been called on occasion) has nowhere near the significance to women as the n-word has to blacks (unless, of course, they are using it to each other)
It’s not a talking point with me, it’s a heartfelt conviction and I shall continue posting my opinion on it every time it comes up.
BTW, who doesn’t find the term offensive? That’s a red herring. Who ever used the term?
Facts aren’t relevant, sadly. The fact that he attacked Perry is going to get the Perry supporters ruffled. But at least we know who supports Perry more then Cain. This is a pretty good test.
Well, I don’t really care whether you believe me or not.
However, it happens to be true. He was not my first choice, but he was gaining momentum with me.
I think this is a core issue. It concerns me and scares me.
Maybe you should think about it a little more seriously, yourself.
“Who ever used the term?”
Perry, apparently.
Anyways, show me a post, prior to today where you mentioned your support of Cain.
Can you please show me where the term was explained to be referring to a flower in the interview with Cain?
I wonder if you all don’t recognize the irony - all of you finding Cain’s comments so “insensitive” towards Perry. Are you candidate baiting?
How is what Cain said any different than what Palin said about Rush using the word “retard”?
I totally get why Palin would say that, given her background. Just as I totally understand Cain said what he said, given his growing up in the segregated South.
“Well, I don’t really care whether you believe me or not.”
And we really don’t care that you get the vapors when Cain attacks Perry.
“However, it happens to be true. He was not my first choice, but he was gaining momentum with me.”
We have no way of verifying this, I hope you understand our skepticism. Someone who’s never said anything positive about Cain, suddenly jumps out and says, “I would have supported him, but...”
“I think this is a core issue.”
According to whom? You?
“It concerns me and scares me.”
Why on earth would it scare you?
“Maybe you should think about it a little more seriously, yourself.”
How about, no? Unlike you, I’ve been following Cain since he announced and I looked into him and his record.
Perry, on the other hand, I spent time over the last few years fighting his Gardasil nonsense. He was willing to sign over young women to be guinea pigs for Merck.
Do you know how many young women have died from the untested drug? Perry was going to make it mandatory before people stepped in and said no.
THAT frightens me.
You're right. And I'm amazed that you are being criticized so harshly for pointing this out. Cain made a mistake. And so he needs to do a little course-correction work here.
Oh, and to save some folks some typing time, I've never liked Perry, and I still think Cain has a lot to offer.
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