Tag: herman cain

Lowering Cain

Of the people who might actually get the Republican nomination for President, Herman Cain would be, beyond comparison, the weakest opponent for Barack Obama. It’s not easy to find someone less qualified for the Presidency than a former half-term governor, but Cain probably does it: he has never held any public office, or for that matter any position involiving public policy other than lobbyist. He is not only grossly ignorant, but proud of his ignorance. His positions are extremist where they aren’t merely incomprehensible.

So, as a liberal, I want Cain, rather than Romney, to be the Republican nominee. The people who have a strong need to destroy Cain are Romney’s handlers and party strategists such as Karl Rove. Whether the charges against him are true or false, I very much hope he skates past them.

So when various wingnut commenters try to make this a “liberal media” plot against a conservative, I can only shake my head and wonder whether they actually believe the sh*t they write. Neither answer is really an attractive one.

Clarification

Herman Cain is pro-choice: he believes that a woman who becomes pregnant as the result of rape should be able to *choose* between bearing her rapist’s child and going to jail.

Since Herman Cain seems to be having a hard time explaining his position on abortion, the spirit of post-partisanship calls on those of us who aren’t his friends politically to help out.

You can see where he’s pinned. Cain knows that he’s supposed to be anti-abortion, and that he’s also supposed to be for minimal government. The problem is that hasn’t been in politics long enough to believe the requisite number of contradictions before breakfast. So he managed to say that he was “pro-life” and that he believed in choice. That makes him sound like all the other pols who say they’re personally against abortion but believe in the right to choose. And he knows that “pro-choice” is about as popular with the base as Barack Obama. So Cain is backpedaling furiously, if not very coherently.

Cain’s actual position actually rather simple, and it makes him both anti-abortion and pro-choice.

See, he believes that a woman who becomes pregnant as the result of rape should be able to choose between bearing her rapist’s child or, alternatively, having a dangerous back-alley abortion and going to jail for it.

What could be fairer than that?

Footnote Cain isn’t nearly as dumb as Rick Perry, but he’s even more clueless about the issues than Sarah Palin was. I completely believe him when he says he doesn’t know what a neo-conservative is and doesn’t either know or care who’s the president of Uz-beki-beki-stan-stan.

No, African-Americans Will Not Vote for Herman Cain

Herman Cain thinks he can draw 1 in 3 African-American voters, which some media outlets are reporting as if it were a remotely sensible statement. The President’s prior experience running against a different never-before-elected outspoken Black Republican preacher and radio host is instructive (or at least ought to be): Black voters in Illinois went for Obama by a more than 11 to 1 margin over Alan Keyes in the 2004 U.S. Senate race.

African-Americans remain staunch Democratic voters, and though President Obama’s approval among Black Americans has slipped a bit this year, a whopping 86% have a generally favorable view of him. If only Blacks were allowed to vote and Cain were the Republican nominee, the President would completely crush him in every precinct in the country.