Posted on 11/02/2011 3:49:03 PM PDT by Perdogg
A spokesman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign is adamantly denying that members of the GOP presidential candidate's staff leaked a story has swamped Herman Cain's campaign this week. Instead, the Perry camp is pointing a finger at the campaign of another rival Republican, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, as a possible source of the report about the sexual-harassment charges levelled a decade ago against Cain by female subordinates at the National Restaurant Association.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
I know what the campaign staff said. I realise that making rational inferences from things Cain or his campaign say is a fool’s errand, it’s all we have to go on.
Your claim was that the harrassment claim was ‘out of the blue’, which is patently false. Cain knew all about it, according to his own latest clarifications. He may have forgotten it, but he should have remembered once Politico started asking questions.
Cain’s campaign has given some details of what Politico told them. Cain says he told staff on his previous political campaign — do you think he informed the senate campaign staff, but not his presidential campaign staff? If so, do you think that was a good strategy in hindsight?
“If so, do you think that was a good strategy in hindsight?”
So far, yes. The two polls taken yesterday (and yesterday only) showed a sharp INCREASE in his support. It seems that the more human he looks, the better he does.
can not argue with anything you said
The problem is everybody wants to win the nomination first, and to do that they have to rise above the other candidates. Each camp has chosen a different strategy.
Gingrich is attacking the media and Obama, hoping that the “don’t say bad things about other republicans” will get him the nomination.
Romney is playing “above the fray”, hoping to cement his “front-runner, inevitable” label.
Cain has decided to tear down all the other conservatives, hoping that conservative supporters, seeing cain trash their candidates, will decide to support him as the last man standing. Except now he’s under attack.
Santorum seems to have decided to go for the sourpuss vote. Don’t understand it, he’s a nice guy I thought, but doesn’t come across that way.
Perry has decided on a two-man strategy, and has primarily attacked Romney and ignored the other candidates. He has made some references to Cain, but very few, and almost said nothing about the other candidates. He is trying to place the idea that there are only two people to consider, Romney and “not Romney”, who would be Perry.
Ron Paul is of course going after the nutcase vote. Sorry Ron Paul supporters. But I think you relish not getting any respect.
Bachmann was going for the pure “I’m the Tea Party” vote. But she became shrill, plus got torpedoed by the “hey, Sarah Palin is the Tea Party, and we can’t have Bachmann mess that up” crew. She also decided that her real opponent was Tim Pawlenty, partly because Pawlenty decided Bachmann was HIS biggest problem, before he realised his biggest problem was that nobody liked him.
Of all the strategies, the two I like are Gingrich and Perry. Gingrich, because I actually like the positive message and the “here’s what I am” over “here’s what’s wrong with the others”.
Perry because my goal is to stop Romney, and Perry is the only candidate actually trying to stop Romney. All the others seem to want to be Romney’s VP.
I understand Cain’s strategy, but don’t like it one bit — burning down the village? It’s a dangerous game, destroying all the other conservatives in the hopes that you will be the last one standing and thereby win by default.
Romney has the easiest strategy, because the media is pushing it, and he gets to look “presidential” without having to attack people. And since Romney’s biggest opponent is really Romney’s own past and present, his job really is to convince people to look at what he says today, and that isn’t helped by trashing other people.
Except that Romney has decided to target Rick Perry. For some reason, Romney sees Perry as a real threat, while not seeing any other candidate as a threat. Don’t know why, but it hurts Romney to attack Perry, so that’s good in my book. Maybe it’s because Perry is attacking Romney, so good for Perry to make Romney step out of his comfort zone.
After you reflect on what started this crash, I will accept your apology and I may even give you mine.
“I know what the campaign staff said. I realise that making rational inferences from things Cain or his campaign say is a fool’s errand, it’s all we have to go on.
Your claim was that the harrassment claim was ‘out of the blue’, which is patently false. Cain knew all about it, according to his own latest clarifications. He may have forgotten it, but he should have remembered once Politico started asking questions.
Cain’s campaign has given some details of what Politico told them. Cain says he told staff on his previous political campaign — do you think he informed the senate campaign staff, but not his presidential campaign staff? If so, do you think that was a good strategy in hindsight?”
You know, for the first couple days, I think this story was helping Cain and conservatives were rallying around him. But I can’t understand why all of a sudden his campaign is throwing accusations (without proof) around at other campaigns-isn’t this almost exactly what happened to him? Why does he want to keep this story alive by playing this “who’s the leaker” game?
The best response is to deny wrongdoing and say we don’t know for sure where the story came from, then move on. But by throwing accusations out at others, I think it eats away at some of the goodwill Mr Cain has built up. And if it turns out that the leak came from someone not connected with any of the campaigns, then he’s going to look all the more foolish.
I have sold Fuller Brush door to door, waitress in restaurant, waitress in bar Nurse in hospital for over a decade and finally a goat herder.
Sheared them, wormed them, deloused them, trimmed their hoofs, and finally skin them with an air compressor and single edge razor blade. Another gal that had a flock taught me how cause she had to figure out a way to skin hers, her husband didn't like skinning them but some had hides too beautiful to put in the ground. Salted them down and then sent to the tanner. Each one of my kids has a beautiful hide that they display..
It was her invention..
Got crap from some one only once, 16 year old candy girl in a movie threatre. Boss followed me into the stock room when I had to refill the candy counter, he grabbed and I slung a large box of candy bars in his gut, open the door and walked out...didn't quit and he didn't fire me...When I found another job, then I quit.
All my girl friends could take care of themselves also and that was way before the stupid feminist even thought of talking back to some male. I always thought the feminists were just plain dumb if they couldn't handle themselves without some man making laws. Like I say, some females have gotten stupid since the feminist movement... Of course my father was a cop and didn't raise his girls to be victims, but no one expected anyone to give them anything either..You worked for what you had... GG
That was the kind of post I come here for.
When I think of harassment, I always recall Charlton Heston’s comment about (I think) his doctor’s office, which was staffed by mostly women. The women had a sign up in plain sight—”Harassment will not be reported but it will be graded.” I also think of Camille Paglia’s observations about construction workers talking crudely to some passing women who then turned around and called them on their offensiveness and tough-talk—the men always backed down and looked stupid.
Where are all these people calling for ‘government to get out of the bedroom’ when it comes to TALK? Kill a baby—hey, none of your business. Talk? Arrest the SOB, call in the hangman, I’m afraid!
The whole sexual harassment thing is just absurd. In the guise of feminism, it is the reinforcement of the idea that ‘the little woman’ can’t handle the harsh real world outside the kitchen. It is the ULTIMATE anti-woman idea—it says women can’t handle their own sexuality and sexual interactions—which feminists tell us is the most male chauvinistic attitude of all.
Women are capable of handling anything a man can handle, but the folks whose paychecks count on dependence, on women thinking of themselves as victims, don’t really want independence at all. As we see with Cain and Justice Thomas, these folks don’t really want independent thinkers—independent thinkers don’t think the way those very folks want them to, all the time. (That’s kind of the idea of independence.) They want dependence on them—that is where control lies. You can’t control someone who doesn’t need you for something.
Oh, apparently, more than a few people have known about this for years and years.
What I mean by “October Surprise” is that classical last ditch effort by general election candidates who’re behind or worried and pull out the real dirt against their opponent during the final weeks or days to try to alter the race in a quick, reactionary way.
It’s very possible that someone in the media floated this episode. All I was saying was that it most likely was not someone directly related with the Dem Party as this type of thing is not necessary at this point and time. I’m sure the media is working night/day to find everything they can against all of the GOP candidates.
The thing with that is, if the candidates themselves go helping the media then it’s pretty damn hard to blame the media entirely for it. Perry’s, um, “rock” issue was probably not something anyone gave much thought to and I can understand that. But this, sexual accusations with money changing hands and with records kept and lawyers involved, this is quite another. This should have been burning bright in his mind for the last 15 years. It should never have fallen into the “gee, I dunno, can’t remember” file in his head.
Cain stammering around, changing his story, and most of all, reacting in the way he has, makes the “question” signs pop-up. The fact that either he or his campaign were completely unprepared for this or thought it wouldn’t be an issue is the galling part.
lol
When the Bush DUI was leaked, Rick Perry was not supporting Gore. lol
He was supporting George W Bush.
Perry supported Gore 12 years before Bush and Gore ran against each other, in 1988, when Gore lost in the primaries to Michael Dukakis.
Ya know, ya just can’t make this stuff up.
lol
Allegra, this one’s for you...he says Perry is suspected for leaking the Bush DUI story when Perry supported Gore against George W Bush in 2000.
Except, that never happened. lol
I think your analysis is correct.
If we're going to treat the presidency as an entry-level job — and the voters came very close to doing that when President Obama was elected with very little experience — we're going to get candidates who 1) have problems in their past that haven't yet gotten exposed during prior campaigns or 2) don't know how to handle serious accusations very well because they've never had that kind of attacks leveled against them before.
I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that Herman Cain is “not ready for prime time.” I don't like saying that at all, but he has been running for president for quite some time, and if he didn't check his closet for skeletons, and if he didn't get preparations for crisis management, he's simply not ready to be president. Maybe he'll get ready; maybe this crisis is what will wake him up and make him ready. But he's not ready today.
The problem is that I'm not sure we have a better candidate out there who is a conservative.
As someone else said elsewhere in the Cain threads — we had three years to come up with a conservative candidate against Obama. How did we get ourselves into this position? There is simply no excuse for us, as conservatives, being so unprepared.
Obama is probably looking at this and laughing. If this stuff continued he has a realistic shot at re-election, and that will be **OUR FAULT** if we throw away what should have been an easy chance to defeat Obama.
That reminds me of an Olympic speed skating race I watched some years ago. I think it was that Ohno punk who caused a big crash just before the finish line and everyone but the guy in last place fell. He crossed the finish line with jubilation as if he did something good.
Amen brother! It is a long way till the general. This will all be a memory by then. People sure have a way of forgetting! Don’t all of you remember that the Geniffer Flowers thing blew on Clinton before New Hampshire but he denied and toughed it out. Ultimately it was the Dem primary votes who decided his fate.
The same will be true of Cain. If there isn’t much more to it than what we already have he should deny and let the GOP primary voters decide his guilt or innocence. Don’t everyone slit their wrists yet!
I like the way both of you think. Great posts!
Whomever leaked the story should be thanked by the Cain Camp. :> Wow......it sure backfired, big time.
It’s too bad the specter of Arlen Specter ruined Santorum, or he would be the best choice available on issues and experience. I don’t think the Republican primary voters will seriously consider anyone but Mitt because it’s “his turn.”
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.