Posted on 10/03/2011 2:33:27 AM PDT by Kaslin
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 Sept. 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 Sept. 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 Sept. 25 to 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 Sept. 24 to 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 Sept. 22 to 25 and Quinnipiac Sept. 14 to 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 Sept. 29 column that Cain's success in business -- engineering turnarounds in Burger King's Philadelphia stores and 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 10 current or possible candidates against Obama. Rasmussen finds Romney ahead by 2 percent and Chris Christie trailing by 1 percent. The other candidate 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 10 Republicans. That may be because some black voters desert Obama when Cain is the opponent.
Further support can be found in the Low Country 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 any time. But he's beginning to look like a contender.
Ping.
He has looked like a contender to me since watching his speech at the GA GOP convention in May of this year.
Herman Cain a Contender? My God, has the writer been sleeping under a rock? What about the current myth, good ole Buckwheat? Obummer never even managed a lemonade stand and all he ever did was vote “present”. There is no comparison between Mr. Cain and Buckwheat. IMO Cain wins hands down.
True, but Barone also knows that it is early still. Just sayin.
Cain made a serious error yesterday when taking the bait of the rock issue. To me it was a “The police acted stupidly” moment for him in that he was not aware of all the details surrounding the rock issue other than what the questioner asked. He could have instead just deferred any comment until he had the opportunity to review the facts himself.
One has to understand the background he carries, but one also needs to know the media is not his friend and habitually uses half truths to forment division and controversy. If Herman revises and extends his remarks today, I’ll give him a mulligan. If not, he has lost my support as being a serious contender.
Yes, but he could fire everyone from top to bottom who was not performing. Not necessarily so with federal employees.
They keep talking about Cain never having held public office as a detriment. I think in this election that may be the one plus Cain possesses and none of the other candidates have. Polls show the public is as disgusted with Congress as they are with this administration. Bush and Obama are both blamed for the economy. We’re in an anti-politician cycle, IMO, so a guy who’s never been a politician might have an edge.
And I don’t remember where I read it, but a article was written a few days ago by a person who was at the straw poll in Florida. He went in as an undecided, but voted for Cain. His line: Cain talks for us, not to us.
P.S. My friend who is a democrat, yet has listened to every Republican debate, told me the only person on stage she would even consider voting for was Cain. After talking with her, she has soured on politicians, in general. Anecdotal, but interesting.
No. His moment will be over soon.
Yep, Cain may become unstoppable as Romney and Perry won’t get conservative support, and as the media try to keep Bachmann in check.
He was a real contender until yesterday when he start saying really stupid stuff to make himself liked by the MSM.
And your support is worth $what exactly? I sent him my largest possible contribution last week.
I can honestly say at this early hour that Fox n Friends sure are on a bandwagon for Herman Cain.
I suppose they assume the more they push and shove him above everyone else nobody will remember who Sarah Palin is.
However Cain won’t fall for the MSM trap they have planned of him going head to head with Sarah Palin.
Says you
not necessarily. He could come up with ideas that a career politico would never be able to come up with
why do you say that? Not looking for a fight, just would like to know your opinion
Dunno about the “right of return’??
Mebbie because there ISN’T ANY??
born December 13, 1945 in Memphis, TN (Meets the Jus Soli Requirement)
Parents were
Luther Cain Jr., born March 16, 1925 in TN, died March 29, 1982 in Atlanta, GA
Lenora Davis, born July 27, 1925 in GA, died August 20, 2005 in Atlanta, GA
Both parents were US Citizens at the time of his birth (Meets the Jus Sanguinis Requirement)
Herman Cain is a NATURAL BORN CITIZEN
Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama ISN'T!
No, “under a rock” is where Cain found a cheap shot against Perry. I don’t object to legitimate criticism, but I do object to Cain showing himself to be a “typical” politician. I thought better of him than that.
Along with the unlikelihood of someone with zero experience in government becoming the nominee, he has shown no commitment to or mastery of policy.
His 999 plan is a bad idea bordering on the gimmicky (and is loaded with grossly pervasive affirmative action ‘enterprise zones), and to any questions of foreign affairs and many on domestic policy, his stock answer is that he’ll hire smart, knowledgeable people and follow their recommendations.
He’s not so much as won a primary race on any level previously and his political inexperience all too regularly shows.
Last week I’d have offered that he does, however, seem like a nice guy. But with the launch of his book tour (another hint that he’s not a contender), he needlessly trashed his opponents (though he steered clear, as always of Romney) by offering such nuggets as that Santorum is “stressed”. Yesterday he of course built on that by haranguing Perry for racial “insensitivity” for the questionable camp name story.
People flocked to him because he seemed decent and principled on the stage compared to our two supposed frontrunners, Perry and Romney, but given a more legitimate, viable option, they’ll move quickly to that IMO.
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