Herman Cain Sitting At The Front Of The Bus Now, No Thanks To Him

Herman Cain Sitting At The Front Of The Bus Now, No Thanks To Him

Submitted by jeremiad on 10/07/11 8:08am
Cain's resurgence in GOP polls has established him as a firm candidate for the 2012 Republican Primary, despite his typical controversy.

Herman Cain has solidified his position in second place (some polls even have him in first) next to Mitt Romney from Massachusetts for the GOP nomination next summer. Cain turned a lot of heads last month when he took first in the Florida Straw Poll with an unexpected 37% of the vote, and has received such media attention in the meantime that he has largely been able to sustain his momentum. That said, Cain's trademark controversial statements, although fodder for pundits and talking heads, doesn't seem to hindering his campaign in the least. Neither does the fact that, although there is widespread outrage at the corporate-government complex within Washington, Cain was a former CEO of Godfather's Pizza and remains friendly to many corporate interests.

The history of Herman Cain's verbal gaffes during his campaign go back to early June, when Cain reportedly told a news station that he had returned from China recently on a business trip and felt that the U.S. should "build a Great Wall" along the southern border to curb illegal immigration. Of course, he didn't stop there. He went on to say that the U.S. should build a moat along the U.S. side of the wall, and fill it with alligators. In a later interview, he retracted the position, saying he was making it "in jest." After the Fourth of July weekend Cain involved himself in a local dispute in a Tennessee town, saying that he felt that communities had the right to block the building of mosques. In explaining his position he got in further hot water by saying that he'd be "very cautious" of placing a Muslim on his administration should he be elected President. "They're trying to attack us," he explained.

Most recently, Cain appeared on Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss his new book, This is Herman Cain!, and his predilection for calling African-Americans that vote Democratic, as well as 81% of Americans that support a tax hike for the wealthy, “brainwashed”. Clearly, if Cain believes that 4 of every 5 Americans has been brainwashed, he’s seems to simply be struggling with how to explain why people don’t agree with him. Furthermore, Lawrence O’Donnell questioned him on a statement form his book in which Cain talks about being too young to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. His father, according to the book, told him to “stay out of trouble” by moving to the back of the bus. O’Donnell dropped a bombshell question, Where do you think black people would be sitting on the bus today if Rosa Parks had followed your father's advice?" Cain responded that he was “distorting the intent of his comments”, and that it wasn’t prudent for a High School student to be involved, regardless of the fact that he was actually a college student at the height of the movement in ’63-’37.

Cain doesn’t strike me as the kind of transformative candidate that many Republican voters are looking for. His close ties to corporate America, his dismissal of over 80% of the American electorate as “brainwashed”, and his mischaracterization of the Civil Rights Movement and reluctance to make waves then. Someone explain to me why he’s at the top of the GOP polls?

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