The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Today’s Herman Cain Headlines

Posted on | November 4, 2011 | 18 Comments

Headline at The Week:

Herman Cain’s accusers: Should
they be allowed to tell their side?

And my post from two days ago is cited in arguing that not only should they be “allowed” to tell their side, they should be compelled to tell their side — and under their own names. Anonymous accusations in such a serious matter are unacceptable. Headline at the ABC News:

Cain Accuser May Issue Statement Today

Will she sign her name to it? No. Of course not. And the media continue protecting them under the assumption that they are victims — which amounts to presuming Herman Cain guilty, based on the testimony of accusers whose credibility aren’t allowed to examine. Headline at Politico:

Sources reveal new details about Cain allegation

The “new details” are not nearly as detailed as the headline suggests, but the shoddiness of Politico is already notorious, eh?

Cain Shows Initial Resilience
in the Face of Controversy

Which is from an ABC/Washington Post poll showing a dead heat — Mitt Romney at 24%, Cain at 23% — in a poll taken entirely after the “scandal” made headlines. Republicans are extending their middle fingers to the media and saying: “You don’t get to choose our nominee for us.” But they’ll keep trying. Headline at The Lonely Conservative:

What a Shock – Big Three Networks Devote
50 Stories to Herman Cain Scandal in Three Days

UPDATE: Rasmussen:

National Poll: Cain 26%, Romney 23%, Gingrich 14%

If Cain survives this, he’ll be bullet-proof.

Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain, Polls

Comments

18 Responses to “Today’s Herman Cain Headlines”

  1. What a Shock – Big Three Networks Devote 50 Stories to Herman Cain Scandal in Three Days | The Lonely Conservative
    November 4th, 2011 @ 8:43 am

    […] a whole lot more than we did Sunday evening when the story broke.Bits Blog linked – thanks!The Other McCain linked – thanks!google_ad_client = "ca-pub-1395656889568144"; /* 300×250, created 8/11/08 */ […]

  2. andycanuck
    November 4th, 2011 @ 9:42 am

    And the lid blown off of Cain’s teapot dome scandal.
    http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/2011/11/phew-thank-god-cain-didnt-say-ill-be-mother/
     

  3. andycanuck
    November 4th, 2011 @ 9:44 am

    And that’s either “dead heat” or you should make clearer that Romney is the “dead head”. ;^)

  4. Bonnie_
    November 4th, 2011 @ 9:49 am

    I believe Politico and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) believed that by taking Cain out now, they would leave Romney as the nominee.  They know they can beat Romney in the general election.

    Instead, Cain weathers the storm of what increasingly looks like fabricated claims of sexual harassment and this story cannot “break” right before the election, as the George W. Bush drunk-driving charge broke just hours before the 2000 election.

    They shot their bullet and missed, and now they’re out of bullets and Cain is still standing.  Oops, Politico.  Perhaps you should have waited on this story until hours before the election.  But you just couldn’t believe that Republicans would nominate this man as their candidate, did you?  

  5. Joe
    November 4th, 2011 @ 10:16 am

    I like my coffee doctored…just sayin! 

    Cain survives if there is no proof of inappropriate sex.  He ran on being not that kind of guy and just said he did nothing wrong.  So far (sorry Adjoran) he has not lied.  He was probably walled off from these allegations and only knew such charges had been raised.  That is it (of course Cain started to speculate again, which is always a problem).  That is not fatal.  He will come out of this bullet proof. 

    If he did lie and there is more evidence than merely accusations (these women have credible stories of abuse)–well then he probably does not survive. 

  6. Joe
    November 4th, 2011 @ 10:21 am

    Bonnie:  It is not that simple.  Most Democrats think Romney is more of a threat than Cain.  Talk to your Dem/Lib relatives and friends.  They reallyd do believe that.  They are wrong to think that, but that is because they recognize Romney as one of their own. 

    The Tea Party scares the stuffing out of them.  They think it is the boogieman and the Klan rolled into one.  They think Cain is a black Palin with no skills or experience.  They like this scandal because it seeds turmoil in the GOP (it does), it distracts the public from Obama’s failings (it does), and it weakens all GOP candidates (that remains to be seen). 

  7. Finrod Felagund
    November 4th, 2011 @ 10:27 am

    Rasmussen’s latest poll of the Republican nominee candidates was taken Wednesday night, and Cain went from tied with Romney last month to a 3-point lead over Romney this month.
     

  8. Anonymous
    November 4th, 2011 @ 11:25 am

    The Politico did provide some juicy new details: the accuser was 30 years old at the time she worked in the NRA’s government affairs division and made some still unspecified complaint to the association’s board and General Counsel.

    The rest of Politico’s “details” boils down to 15-year old gossip overheard at the water cooler (hearsay).

    One night, a 30-year old female employee of NRA dined at Ciao Baby Cucina, where she ordered the mushroom risotto. She wore flared trousers and Doc Marten boots. Her poodle was named Fifi. But here comes the really devastating details . . . this unnamed woman supposedly became unhappy in her employment at NRA, made an unspecified complaint, and received a severance package as part of an agreement that’s still sealed. 

    We’ve come a long way since the Clarence Thomas hearings . . .

    Heck, at least Thomas got high-tech lynched by the likes of NYT and WaPo. If the Cain deal ends up being another disgusting episode in the history of American “progressivism,” Cain will have had to an endure a Gawker-lynching, which is almost too absurd to even contemplate. 

  9. Dm
    November 4th, 2011 @ 11:30 am

    Yea, Rob, he’ll be “bullet proof” until somebody asks him a perfectly ordinary question about something beyond his 999 plan, like say abortion, or America’s longstanding policy about not negotiating with terrorists, and then he’ll once again prove himself to be a ill-read, poorly informed blockhead.

    And now this is a question to you personally Rob, ————— have you gone off the deep end on us or something?

    I understand fully not wanting Romney to be the nominee;  I get that.

    I SHARE that sentiment, FULLY, unequivocally. 

    But just because I don’t want Romney doesn’t mean I have to settle for a guy who clearly, CLEARLY hasn’t been reading much in the way of foreign policy over the last, —– oh, shall we say, the past few DECADES.

    The manner in which he has handled this little drama, in addition to his boneheaded utterances over the last several weeks of campaigning, DICTATE the conclusion that this guy is so far over his head that it’s embarrassing to observe.

    And yet you’re going to bat for this clown!

    And then you constantly chirp about journalistic judgement and prudence.  Yet here you are going overboard, {what other word suffices} for a guy who is clearly the most unsuited for high office on that stage, {even exceeding Huntsman and Paul!}.  How can your unbalanced enthusiasm for Cain NOT call into question your judgement on a host of issues. 

  10. Anonymous
    November 4th, 2011 @ 11:40 am

    Who is your preferred candidate?

  11. Datechguy's Blog » Blog Archive » The Black Bill Clinton sans facts
    November 4th, 2011 @ 12:00 pm

    […] base audience not only doesn’t include the GOP base which distrusts and despises them, or as Stacy McCain put it: Republicans are extending their middle fingers to the media and saying: “You don’t get to […]

  12. richard mcenroe
    November 4th, 2011 @ 12:10 pm

    Smitty just made a comment about low intensity domestic conflict on Twitter.  

    What people don’t understand is that it is NOT low-intensity.

    To a degree, it literally doesn’t matter what a Cain or Palin says or does.  Voting for them is effectively a revolutionary act, a third-party vote in what is actually a one-and-a-half party system.  This might also account for Perry’s inability to gain traction; he may have some genuine accomplishments conservatives would approve of in between his cowboy posturing and liberal immigration squishiness, but the fact that he is still just a machine politician from another part of the machine disqualifies him in their eyes.

  13. Anonymous
    November 4th, 2011 @ 12:36 pm

    Good points. A growing contingent of everyday Republicans/conservatives are beginning to reject candidates like Romney or Perry, whom they probably would have supported in the past, for reasons that aren’t necessarily well-developped in their minds, etc.

    It’s more of a reaction that’s not radically different from how the market works. Consumers don’t necessarily have a well-developed sense for why they don’t like a particular product, they just stop purchasing it. If they find another product that suits them better, they buy it even though they might not be able to give a sophisticated explanation for why they like it and how/why it “works” better.

    They’re not even certain that Palin or Cain are viable alternatives to the existing establishment (or political “machine”) models, but they’re no longer buying the old models.

    IMO, we should neither condescend toward nor romanticize this (populist) reaction. On the one hand, the so-called experts and sophisticated cultural and technocratic elites (e.g., The Cult of Experts), have continually failed on to deliver on their outsized promises, as they’ve created one faux “solution” after another (which in totality cause more harm than good); yet, even now, they remain blind to their limitations, increasingly more deluded, and therefore increasingly more dangerous. On the other hand, it’s not true that “the people” en masse have some kind of collective folk wisdom that will enable them to “fix” hyper complex socioeconomic problems via government policy, either.

  14. Anonymous
    November 4th, 2011 @ 1:33 pm

    I do believe the rank and file are sick of the media sniping at our leaders.

  15. Anonymous
    November 4th, 2011 @ 3:19 pm

    And the Political Correctness that supplies the ammo.

  16. Anonymous
    November 4th, 2011 @ 3:42 pm

    At some point the people must be willing to gamble on the unknowable. Obama’s only argument is that the alternative to him is worse than what Republicans offers. If he can convince enough people who are skeptical that what he is doing will in time work he wins. I don’t see any way he can make that sale. The tepid support his jobs program has in the polls is based on people’s desire that the government do something, anything even if it’s wrong.

     The Republican’s belief is that Obama’s “cure” is exponentially worse than the disease. Convincing the public of this is a harder task. To many people that a jobs bill is designed to create jobs means that it will. The most cynical thing the Republicans could do would be to pass much of Obama’s bill. As Obama’s policies are given more and more time to fail the more people will be willing to take a chance on something different even if they don’t follow the logic of the proposed policies.

  17. ThePaganTemple
    November 4th, 2011 @ 4:47 pm

    He didn’t lie. There is absolutely no evidence he engaged in sexual harassment, of anybody, which is the point. But if you think he didn’t have sex with any of these women, I’ve got an escalator to the moon I’d like to sell you.

  18. ThePaganTemple
    November 4th, 2011 @ 4:50 pm

    Actually, the Democrats do have somewhat of a point about Romney. No he won’t win Massachusetts and its foolish to think he might, but on the other hand he’s got the best chance of winning not only New Hampshire (which in this election might make all the difference) but also Michigan, and for that maybe the other upper Midwestern states. Also, with him Florida might well be a shoe-in and even states like Oregon might come into play.