No, He Cain’t

by Pejman Yousefzadeh on November 3, 2011

Can we agree that the Herman Cain sexual harassment fiasco is exactly the kind of catastrophe that is bound to visit a campaign that is ridiculously disorganized, and a candidate that is clearly not savvy about running for political office? I don’t even care at this point whether the charges are accurate; even if we assume that they are not, Cain’s habit of shifting his story in addressing the accusations, his campaign’s treatment of reporters asking questions about the charges, and now, the wild claims that other campaigns are behind the attacks, offered with little supporting evidence, show the Cain campaign in a very bad light, and show that the candidate himself is confused, desperate, and entirely on the defensive. No one should have any confidence whatsoever in Cain’s ability to survive a fall election campaign against a battle-hardened Obama team (and incidentally, let there be no doubt whatsoever that the Obama people are loving what is happening to Cain, and the havoc it is wreaking on the Republican field in general, as the Perry and the Romney campaigns are now getting caught up in this story). Republicans who want to win in 2012, should start casting around for another candidate.

Getting back for a moment to the misstatements of the candidate himself, Cain has never proven himself to be a disciplined speaker during his run for the Presidency. His tendency to make ridiculous statements, and then to claim that he was just joking, and his fondness for misstating facts when it comes to addressing policy are all of a piece with his varying explanations and responses to the charges against him. He has shown little to no ability to drive a message, and to show voters that he possesses a command of the issues. If this is a worthy candidate for the Presidency, then I am Marie of Roumania.

Tagged as: 2012 Presidential Election, Barack Obama, Herman Cain, Incompetence, Mitt Romney, Politics, Republicans, Rick Perry, Sexual Harassment, Stupidity

  • Horace

    In other words, the ends justify the means, as long as the “ends” results in the removal of a candidate who doesn’t pass the Pejman test of being worthy of the Presidency. What a despicable sentiment to have. What has happened to our side?

    • Dm

      What would be wrong with desiring to win the general, and doing whatever necessary to make sure the damage Obama and his leftist minions are inflicting on the country comes to an end?

      “[D]espicable sentiment?”

      We’re preparing to go against the Democrats and the media whose total credibility is on the line next November, and you’re worrying about whether Cain’s removal, {which is now absolutely necessary} comports with various standards that increasingly no longer obtain.

      Wake up and smell the coffee dude.

      Cain hasn’t ANY mental or rhetorical discipline whatsoever, and has REPEATEDLY demonstrated as much.  His frequent lapses aren’t cute, aren’t charming, but make him look like the poorly informed, poorly read joke that he is.  When queried beyond the compass of his 999 plan, Cain CONSISTENTLY demonstrates a lack of command of whatever he’s been asked. 

      AND then when asked about that, ——— he jokes about it.

      And I’m supposed to take him seriously.

      If this is what’s needs to be used to make him go away, ————————- so be it.

      The joke is the guy who knows full well that he knows so little, yet nonetheless tries to foist himself on the GOP.

       

    • Pejman Yousefzadeh

      Nowhere did I write any such thing, but alas, I cannot fully prevent you from holding to your misinterpretations of my post.

      • Horace

        It’s the spirit of your post, if not the exact wording. It is also the same sentiment of Schiffren over at NRO, and Rubin at WaPo. “Hey, it may not be true, but at least it’s taking out a guy we don’t like.”. We should be defending the guy on our side from a malicious smear until credible, on-the-record evidence surfaces. Until then, it does matter whether it is true or not.

        • Pejman Yousefzadeh

          Ah, so you are a mind-reader, capable of divining “the spirit of [my] post.” Truly, the gods of Olympus have blessed you with the insight of the Muses themselves!

          Or, of course, you failed to get at what I wrote, which is the following: Independent of whether or not the charges against Cain are true, he and his campaign have proven themselves manifestly unprepared for prime time in dealing with them. Given that the fall election campaign will be brutal for any Republican, the GOP ought to nominate a candidate who can give as good as he/she might get, and who can deal competently with negative campaigning from the other side.

          Cain has proven that he is not that candidate.

          • Horace

            As I was saying…

            The allegations, true or not, have served a purpose. They have wounded a campaign, proven it unworthy. It’s why the Perry supporters at Red State have seemed downright giddy in their updates about new, unsubstantiated allegations. Same thing with Rubin’s tweets. Whether it was Emmanuel, Romney, Perry, or the K street lobbyists (who fear the overhaul of the tax code) that leaked this it has hurt the entire GOP field in some way or another. The roll-out by Politico was disgusting, hypocritical and reminiscent of Thomas. Where’s the outrage over that?

          • porchhound

            Another “Cain isn’t ready” article that follows dozens of others…at least do something ORIGINAL…if you are capable….which you do not appear to be!

      • Dm

        Why “alas?”

        The guy misinterpreted what you wrote, BUT even assuming arguendo that you fully intended what he thought you did, ——————- what would be wrong with that?

        This isn’t some law review article that nobody will read.

        This drama is playing out live, where the stakes cannot be calculated.  A more than passing familiarity with how Obama plays politics should remove unnecessary scruples about what needs to be done.

        This campaign season is going to be without any doubt whatsoever the most vicious, the most mendacious, the most purely wicked in American history.

        And we had better win the damn thing.

        • Pejman Yousefzadeh

          Well, because I want what I wrote to be represented correctly. It matters to me.

          • porchhound

            What you wrote was a hatchet piece to try and take Cain down based on speculation that he MUST be guilty if he has been accused.  That is not journalism, it is ADVOCACY for his opponents!

  • Dm

    One more thing, and that needs to be recalled before people run off and indulge in all kinds of sentiments of sympathy for Cain.

    Just several weeks ago the Perry campaign got hit about a painted rock that was a pure hit piece designed to wipe out the guy with the best job creation record of the Republican candidates.

    And how did Cain respond pray tell to that hit piece.  Did he come out and investigate the facts, did he wait for those facts to be reported, ————— what did he do?

    We know what he did.

    He came off the top rope on a reeling Perry campaign and flat out effectively accused Perry of being a closet racist, and then to pile on after that, said that he would be willing to serve as a VP for anybody on the stage BUT Perry.

    And I’m supposed to feel sorry for this crud who now is experiencing a full KARMA pay back.

    Screw Cain, and screw the horse he rode in on. 

    • Anonymous

      Liar.

      • Dm

        Did Cain and his campaign, or did they not, come off the top rope against Perry, precisely on the issue of the painted rock hit piece published in the Washington Post?

        Whether you care to acknowledge it or not, Cain SEIZED on the opportunity to make headway at Perry’s expense PRECISELY on that issue.  I don’t fault him for political opportunism, but I can surely damn him for trying to haul in the race card in the Republican primary.

        And if Perry ultimately gains the nomination, Cain’s attack against him on the painted rock issue will surely be fodder for the Obama campaign.

        And Cain knew, {or in his case, being the poorly read blockhead that he is, he might not have known it, because beyond his little niche, he don’t know spit}.

        Man up.

        Man up and accept that the Cain mania was just that, a mania, an unthinking and wild response born from the dismay that Romney might gain the nomination.

        People running out there supporting Cain know as little about him as Cain himself does on all issues beyond his 999 plan.

        It’s mirror imaged ignorance.

        And it’s unwise……… Besides being unseemly, that is for any real Conservative worthy of the name.

        • Anonymous

          “Did Cain and his campaign, or did they not, come off the top rope against Perry,
          precisely on the issue of the painted rock hit piece published in the Washington
          Post?”

          I would contend that he did not though I will admit that I thought his response to be formulaic; “..if it’s true it’s shameful…” or whatever, and I will say in no uncertain terms however that I would far prefer a Cain oval office to one occupied by yet another establishment liberal even further left than W.

          No, give me an honest man who knows what to do about his ignorance of subjects outside his province thank you.  That’s far preferable to me to another slick politician who’s primary interest is in his own career.  I urge to you remember what we got when voters elected the most liberal, and as it turned out least ethical, Republican ever nominated.

          He wasn’t all that good as president either, was he? And his admiministration led to an era of expansion in liberal and progressive influence from which the nation may never fully recover.

          And what makes you think that Romney can actually beat Obama?  The polls?  The fact that the administration says he’s the only one they fear?  Please, I’m sure you’re smarter than that.

          Having said that I intend to vote for whoever is nominated to oppose what’s his name’s re-election though I would prefer any conservative even Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich with all his liberal attachments or Michelle Bachman.

          Really hope she keeps her seat in the house though – we’re going to want her help.

    • porchhound

      OK Rick..I don’t know WHERE you get the time to post on here but we know your RINO feelings are hurt and you can’t STAND that this uppity black man is creaming you even in TEXAS….breathe in….breathe out….that’s it…now…don’t you feel all better…want us to get your buddy Al Gore to get you a tummy rub???

      • Dm

        But you’re forgetting that the one crying all over the place is Cain, and his campaign.

        And his many, and sadly deluded, supporters.

        They’re the ones out there lamenting how unfair all of this supposedly is.

        Moreover, you’re overlooking the premise upon which my comment is predicated.   That CAIN hasn’t room to complain AFTER what he did to Perry.

        Furthermore, Perry’s job creation record is factual, not subjective; that Texas amounts to almost half of ALL existing job creation in the country is not something to overlook on the campaign trail.

        However, ——————————— I’m not one of Perry’s supporters.

        Nor am i a “Republican in name only.”

        I’m clearly more conservative than you, which is why I see right through the sadly ill-read, poorly-informed Herman Cain.

        I don’t get on bandwagons, such as that of Herman Cain.

        But then again, it spares me the chagrin of having to fall off such bandwagons  when they invariably hit bumps in the road.

        Try to look for a soft spot when you’re looking to finally get off that momentary infatuation with Cain.

        And try to acquire some savvy and judgement hereafter, ——– will ya’?

  • Anonymous

    Fortunately, Cain doesn’t have to run in 57 states. Maybe he should get a teleprompter. If only he were a community organ grinder, or the grinder’s assistant. Even better if he didn’t have a successful business career and the presidency was his first job!

  • Anonymous

    Remember, his campaign is being run by the guy in the smoking video.  Cain sorely needed some real campaign vets in there to help him stay on message.  Now it’s too late, he’s going down and it’s going to be very ugly. 

  • porchhound

    We can agree that you are  someone whose intent is to undermine Cain’s nomination with fifteen year old accusations of “words spoken”.  In other words..”he said..she said”.  There is no accusation of ACTIONS …you know…like sending crotch pics or sexually attacking women or exposing yourself in a hotel room and saying “kiss it!”…

    Can we agree that we don’t CARE about your tempest in a teapot…we have a Nation to turn around here and a HUGE GOVERNMENT that is out of control.

    Priorities man…priorities!

    • Dm

      Whereas before I might not have cared about it, I care now because it exposes the utter and cosmic incompetence of Cain’s campaign, ——————– and that campaign incompetence is but a foretaste of what we would experience in the general.

      He can’t handle this now, he won’t handle similar garbage thrown his way in the general.

      It’s real simple, this whole drama is a case of the past being the prologue.

      Who chose the people running his campaign, if not Cain?

      Who selected the people who believed a good way of responding to allegations against him in the Republican primary was to drop the race card?

      Who is it around him that makes him comfortable with his own vast ignorance on one issue after another, and who selected him?

      Cain’s campaign isn’t so much a political campaign as it is a maniacal cult of believers willing to go to the mattresses over any consideration of their new found beau ideal.

      Only the Cain campaign would defend their guy’s answers, {or rather “answers”} about Gitmo detainees or abortion by accusing his interlocutors of “gotcha” questions.

      Only in Cain’s universe are straight forward queries about topical issues moments of political peril that call forth zealotry and unthinking  partisanship.

  • pansycritter

    In Obama we have a candidate that is savvy about running for political office-that’s about his only quality and the only thing he wants to do-and look at the mess we have.

    I’ve listened to Herman Cain and he isn’t ready for prime time but not being politically savvy isn’t the problem. That’s the refreshing part.

    • Dm

      There’s NOTHING refreshing about ignorance displayed, flaunted and strutted down the catwalk of American political life.

      What you’re seeing is hubris, arrogance, and an arrogance unfortified by long study, by long preparation, thus an arrogance that might be justified.

      He doesn’t know ANYTHING beyond his little plan.

      And even that he explains so poorly that it makes one wonder if he even has a handle on that.

  • Anonymous

    Here we go again.  If you’re not a professional politician then don’t even consider running for high office.  That seems to be the message of the supporters of ever bigger government, as if bigger government is necessarily better government and slicker politicians are more fit to govern that commoners.

    Herman Cain is the closest thing to a citizen politician that we’ve seen in a federal election since before the “civil” war and the establishment, made up largely of professional political figures and their sychophants, cannot stand the idea that we might just elect him.  Why, it could start a trend and then where whold these talentless hacks find their sponsors?

    Establishment politicians, career politicans that is, have learned that politics is the one area in which any con man can make a great living and likely never be taken to task for unethical or even illegal actions – assuming said politician is a Democrat of course.

    It is disgusting that we have allowed our political system to arrive at this sorry pass.   The whole process reminds me of the clicques in high school and their gossipy hangers on.

    • Dm

      So just because he’s this supposed beau ideal of a citizen politician, we’re supposed to feel privileged to support him, ————- DESPITE the clear indications we have that he’s a poorly read, ill-informed blockhead?

      I just love too this assumption that because he’s this would be citizen politician, that excuses his vast, VAST ignorance of one issue after another. 

      I’m not a politician, and I can lend light to just about any issue under the Sun, be it domestic or foreign.

      But the Cain supporters EXCUSE Cain from even having cared enough to read about what’s been going on the last couple of decades. 

      This clown hadn’t a clue what the right of return was?

      This clown conflated what it was to be pro-life and pro-choice.

      Now Romney might be all over the place on those two positions, {having embraced both of them at one time or the other…} BUT AT LEAST he KNOWS what those positions are.   Cain cares so little about his ignorance that he can’t even bring himself to rectify it by reading about what’s going on in this thing called, for want of any other term, ———- THE WORLD>

      Some of us don’t find any charm in a guy who asks us to grant him the nomination PRECISELY BECAUSE of his ignorance, and that such ignorance somehow becomes a seal of approval because that ignorance means he’s untainted by the ebb and the flow, the give and the take of political life. 

      I’m getting to the point where I don’t which is worse, a guy with the nerve to ask for a nomination he’s done nothing to warrant, or a citizenry momentarily enamored of such a guy.

      This guy is the Republican equivalent to Obama, a man EMINENTLY unsuited for high office, eminently ill-informed, eminently ill-read, therefore eminently ill-suited for the office.

      • Anonymous

        Ask a few proplr who are less interested in politicas, and oneupsmanship, the we are about the fabled right of return and you’ll get an alarming number of blank looks.

        But that’s besidethe point.  I would far rather have a president who can admit that he doesn’t already know everything than one who enters office with preconcieved ‘solutions’ to every political dilemma.  I prefer that for the same reason thet I prefer a candidate who is not prepared to defend himself against false accuxations because he believes the fact that those allegations were found to be false is sufficient to end any controversy.

        In both case I prefer honest ignorance to politically expedient bullfritters, however reassuring those fritters may be.  I can see however from the tone of your comment that you prefer the fritters and I wish you more luck with that than with the hopeychangey thing.

  • Pamelia Cataldi

    YES HE CAIN!  Who the hell do you think you are?  You don’t speak for *WE THE PEOPLE* We’ll be electing this POTUS……Herman Cain/Newt Gingrich 2012!

    • Anonymous

      Fascinating. Presumably, I cannot write on my own behalf regarding Cain’s candidacy on my own blog, but you can not only write on your behalf, you can write on behalf of “WE THE PEOPLE” as well. I assume that you appointed yourself to the position; how very convenient.

      Of course, someone ought to have told you long ago that mindless cheerleading does not constitute an argument. Whoever failed to do so deprived you of an important life lesson.

    • Pejman Yousefzadeh

      Fascinating. Presumably, I cannot write on my own behalf regarding Cain’s candidacy on my own blog, but you can not only write on your behalf, you can write on behalf of “WE THE PEOPLE” as well. I assume that you appointed yourself to the position; how very convenient.

      Of course, someone ought to have told you long ago that mindless cheerleading does not constitute an argument. Whoever failed to do so deprived you of an important life lesson.

      • Anonymous

        I love Herman Cain and just donated $20.12 and hope every other Cain supporter reading this does the same.  Thanks for the reminder!

        Donate today! https://supporthermancain.com/iowafund/src/23094

      • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_GG7QND4SBQWUHLQPCII7H24ROM zaq

        And someone should have explained to you, Pejman, that we’re tired of the what the lamestream media, professional politicians, and so called political pundits are doing to America. I’ve become firmly convinced that you guys truly
        want to be the modern day Pied Piper of our lives. 

        All you do is pipe story after story to
        the air waves, trying to tell us “No he Cain’t.” Some
        networks launch an astronomical amount of stories, hoping the shear
        volume of information will overwhelm us.  And, other outlets
        parade political pundits on stage who claimed they know for certain
        that Mr. Cain can’t be elected because he doesn’t have the resources.  Or, he didn’t handle this story the way you think it should be handled and it will be a death knell.  But ALL of you continue to ignore that he has gone from a name ID of 21 percent in August to 79 percent now.  You continue to be flabbergasted at the fact that he has risen to the lead in the national polls.  And, you continue to ignore that scientific state polls show him leading in a large number of those polls.

        The sad reality is that the lamestream media, professional politicians, and so called political pundits are actually more like the rat infestation from the Brothers Grimm story.  You simply want to overrun Americans with your political drivel.  And, like the flea bitten vermin, the cold hard fact is lamestream media, professional politicians, and so called political pundits are the true carriers of the plague that is driving this country towards the abyss.
        So, keep making fun of “We the People” with your professional uppity attitude.  We’re waking up to your nonsense and we are determined to take this country back….vote by vote.

        • Pejman Yousefzadeh

          “Lamestream media.” How clever. Spend all night thinking that one up?

Previous post:

Next post: