Herman Cain’s Changing Timeline

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO and White House aspirant Herman Cain has not been giving a consistent response on his sexual harrassment allegations. In fact, it seems to be a constantly changing timeline. Look at THIS.

What does this mean? It means any editors worth their journalistic salt will keep looking into this story because correctly or not the response of Cain and his campaign team are giving out the vibes that he has something to hide. And this sparks journalistic activity — not activity that is partisan or ideological. But a politician or public figure hiding something begs for more scrutiny.

What’s delicious is watching some of Cain’s supporters and Rush Limbaugh suggest that The Politico is the epitome of the big, bad, liberal news media or some kind of racist website. This is typical 21st century political speak where partisans become defense lawyers for those on their side and prosecutors for those on the other side and if it was someone on the other side they would react differently. If you think about when The Politico was launched, who’d ever think we’d see the day when it would be in effect accused of being a liberal partisan tool or somehow racist? Still others suggest Mitt Romney is behind it all.

What is most likely behind it all is an editor who decided to look closely at Cain since he is now at the top of some GOP Presidential preference polls. Reporters were assigned. They found some things swept under the carpet — things that Herman Cain most assuredly knew where there and could have been ready to respond to in a way that would minimize damage.

Instead we have Cain almost begging for this sexual harassment story to have real “legs.”

Most damning for Cain: he suggested there was never a settlement or that he never knew about it. But he has had to hedge with this NBC report:

NBC News has confirmed that one woman received a settlement from the National Restaurant Association after complaining about inappropriate sexual conduct by Herman Cain.

NBC News is not disclosing the name of the woman nor characterizing who she is.

Cain denied the allegations, saying on FOX this morning he was “falsely accused.” “I have never sexually harassed anyone, anyone,” he said, “and absolutely, these are false accusations.”

Despite being the chief executive officer of the National Restaurant Association, he said he was unaware of any settlement with the accusers, though he didn’t deny it.