Posted on 10/31/2011 10:50:23 AM PDT by martosko
The chief of staff to Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said Monday that he has “no clue” who may have been behind the story published Sunday night in Politico claiming two women accused the candidate of inappropriate conduct in the 1990s, which Cain has now denied.
“I have no idea,” chief of staff Mark Block told The Daily Caller. “No clue. I would find it hard to believe that anybody from another campaign would do that, but then again this is politics. Isn’t it?”
(Excerpt) Read more at thedc.com ...
I bet this is a combination of Obuggery and Myth Remulak.
Mitt and the vichey. They’re going to Clarence Thomas him. It’s not whether it’s true, it’s the seriousness of the charge. Mitt and the old guard are Anita Hill.
This is going around the Blaze, Facebook, and other sites right now. It seems a staffer in an opponents camp magically knew this was coming a few days before it hit and, shock, tweeted about it.
http://www.twitter.com/#!/slmbolick/status/129770632018788352
Why bring up a Republican rival?
Is he trying to imply something?
what opponent?
If you know, tell.
See the link and note the date
Someone needs to dig into Politico and find out.
It could be Romney. It could be the RINO Establishment. It could be any of Cain’s other opponents. And it could be Gang Obama.
Obama might do it if their internal polling shows that Cain would wipe the floor with him in the general election.
I can’t see the link, because I don’t do Twitter.
I’m also not saying that camp is behind it officially. After what Paul’s camp did to Perry, they would be stupid to do it to Cain. However, it does show that there was a buzz among competing campaigns about this a few days before the Politico revealed it.
I suspect the Rovebot GOP Establishment is behind this. They have been doing everything they can to derail Cain. This sort of sleazy tactics is right up their ally.
I don’t have tweet... can you explain more...names?
On one side (Politico) you have this:
We have a report where we know nothing about the accusers and the specifics of the accusations from a dozen years ago.They, at this point, are simply reported very vaguely by Politico: “episodes that left the women upset and offended” and “physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable," and that, "they regarded as improper in a professional relationship.”
We have allegation of payoff in the five figure range, but again, nothing specific. IMHO, until the accusers come up with something much more specific, like names, dates and places, it is going to continue to be nothing more than an attemted smear campaign from my perspecitve.
Maybe Politico has more...time will tell, but at this point, it's not out there.
Ron Magruder, Denise Marie Fugo and Joseph Fassler, the chair, vice chair and immediate past chairman of the National Restaurant Association board of directors through the entire time of Cain’s position at the Restruant Association, said they hadn’t heard about any complaints regarding Cain making unwanted advances.“I have never heard that. It would be news to me,” said Fugo, who runs a Cleveland, Ohio, catering company, adding such behavior would be totally out of character for the Cain she knew. “He’s very gracious.”
Fassler, who helped bring Cain on board as CEO of the restaurant association, said that any inappropriate behavior was not brought to his attention and that he would be upset to learn it had gone on and he was not made aware of it.
“That’s a shock to me,” Fassler said. “As an officer during all of Herman’s years there as a paid executive… none of that stuff ever surfaced to me. Nobody ever called me, complained about this, nor did I ever hear that from Peter Kilgore, nor did I ever hear that from Herman Cain.”
Fassler — who ran a Phoenix food-service company and finished his term as chairman the month before Cain’s June 1999 departure but remained on the board’s executive committee — described Cain as treating men and women identically and asserted it was “not within his character” to make unwanted advances. “It’s not what I know of him,” Fassler said.
Much like Fassler, almost all board members remember Cain fondly and say he left on good terms.
Cain was “extremely professional” and “fair” to female staffers at the restaurant association, recalled Lee Ellen Hayes, who said she “worked fairly closely with” Cain in the late 1990s, when she was an executive at the National Restaurant Association Education Fund, a Chicago-based offshoot of the group.
Cain’s treatment of women was “the same as his treatment of men. Herman treated everyone great,” said Mary Ann Cricchio, who was elected to the board of the restaurant group in 1998. She said Cain left such a good impression on the organization that when he spoke at a group event in January of this year, as he was considering a presidential bid, “he had unanimous support in the room.”
So, at this pont, who you gonna believe?
And, at this point I do not believe it was the DNC that did this. Too soon. They would have held it for the general. I believe some RINOs, afraid of what Cain represents and his climb in the polls, are taking shots at him.
But, they will have to be a LOT more spoecific than this, and Cain's responses today have been forthright in denial. He said the accusations were flat out false, and everyone who knows the man and has worked with him indicates such accusations are not believable.
It’s likely that he was responding to a reporter’s question.
I can’t believe this ploy will work. It didn’t really for Clarence Thomas, and it won’t now. I’m not even a Cain supporter, but even I can easily this for the barbra streisand it is.
It was Perry’s Arizona campaign (chair or something like that, I’ve seen several posts giving different titles for her). With that said, I don’t think the Perry camp itself would do this, but the buzz among opponents was happening before it was released so someone was floating the story to Cain’s opponents.
The tweets were from Perry camp.
He was asked by reporters who he thought was behind the story. It is a set up to keep the GOP fighting among themselves. His answer was designed to derail media speculation, not fule it.
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