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.
“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.”
You aren’t concerned about the fact that Perry himself said that his wife convinced him to run against his better wishes?
That doesn’t sound like a particularly attractive candidate to me.
Herman Cain Wins TeaCon Midwest Straw Poll With Whopping 77% of Total Votes
Rather, it was "dealt" to him, and he played the hand--and into the hands--of those who delight in that kind of game.
Sure--it would have been FANTASTIC if Cain had "turned the tables" on the "dealers" in this game, or thrown the card back into their faces, instead of focusing on the "card". But that he did not play that hand as skillfully as I would have liked is NOT--to me--any good reason to stop betting on him to win in a "game" where the "at stake" is the fate of our country!
Your post is an excellent analysis of the situation. As you implied, Cain was set-up here, and he fell into the trap.
IMHO, that does not disqualify him, by any means. But neither is it something that can be ignored. I would hope that Cain would issue a clarification here.
Here’s the question — Are these straw polls meaningful? I mean do they help predict anything about the primaries?
I honestly don't know. I included that TeaCon straw poll link in my post above only because I just happened to see the big headline on BigGovernment.com
I've been going to CPAC in DC for the past 9-10 years, and I can tell you that the CPAC Straw Poll is a complete joke. It's pathetic the way the lame-stream media and even legit media sources like Fox News, Drudge, etc. take that poll seriously.
It's very unscientific, and for the past several years the (mostly bussed in) Ron Paul-bots have literally stuffed the ballot boxes with their votes for Ron Paul. CPAC uses unscientific paper ballots (with young kids collecting those ballots) and the Paul-bots get away with hijacking the poll year after year.
I understand that you are all for Cain and that’s fine.
If his handling of this issue is okay with you, that’s fine also.
It’s a deal breaker for me.
So many people have attacked me.
Where to start?
Thank goodness, both Mark Davis (local talk show host) and Rush have taken my side. I didn’t think I was crazy but now I know I wasn’t.
Okay, Cain was the great black hope, but he’s shown a character flaw that I can’t get beyond.
A lot of people agree with me.
I think I could find some previous comments supporting Cain if I looked hard, maybe on the Sunday Morning Talk Show thread, but you people are so hard core and lacking in reason, you still wouldn’t believe me.
Okay, I found this post I made on last Sunday’s sunday morning talk show thread.
Show me where I was against Cain in this comment... I was hoping for him.
Sunday Morning Talk Show Thread 2 October 2011
Sunday, October 02, 2011 9:06:07 AM · 98 of 257
altura to bray
Interesting insight about Romney.
I don’t even know what to think about Cain. I like him a lot but he’s just entered the war zone. I wonder if the press will hold off on him like they did on Obama because he’s black. And Cain actually is black, not some weird hybrid.
Somehow I don’t think they will. So I hope nothing emerges that ruins Cain as a candidate.
I’m still hoping Sarah runs and I still like my Texas governor. He may be ruined or he may not. We’ll see.
Also, I hope we will concentrate thoroughly on continuing our 2010 victories in the House and Senate. If we can get both those bodies packed with conservatives it won’t matter quite so much about the true conservatism of the president.
Oh, it will matter. I just mean it will be a fail safe position.
Can’t hardly get on Free Republic these days. Bitterness and invective just seep from the screen into my room and make me feel bad.
My husband just instructed me to, “Order MORE Bumper Stickers.” We are supporting Herman Cain.
White conservatives like to hear black candidates who articulate their views and will vote for them:
&&&
Let me correct that—
Conservatives like to hear candidates who articulate their views and will vote for them:
Barrone is an idiot. True conservatives — white and black — see past race. Why can’t the media elites get over their obsession with race?
I hope he can shake off being duped by the MSM hit pieces that were contrived this weekend. Falling into taking a position on the fake “N” rock story at the hunting ranch and the lie Obama and his minions are telling about Tea Party advocates booing a gay soldier was a bungled attempt to be politically correct. His team should have prepped him better so he understood the truth about the falsely constructed media stories.
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.