What Our Guts Now Tell Us About Herman Cain
If you are a reporter or editor or perhaps even blogger who covers politics, you’ve been here before: An allegation is made against a politician that seems specious on its face and your well-attuned gut agrees that it is. But as the days pass and the target flails first at the news media and then his perceived enemies, your gut is not so sure. Then there are new allegations and your gut finally heaves and tells you that they are all true.
That, in a four short days,is what has happened to my gut regarding allegations that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain made unwanted advances on two woman employes of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s. And now new harassment allegations have been made.
Cain, of course, has only himself to blame for the ham-handed way that he has responded to the allegations since Politico broke the story on Sunday. He first blamed that vast liberal media conspiracy (of which Politico certainly would not be a part if the conspiracy existed) and then lashed out at his closest competitor for the nomination, Rick Perry, and then Mitt Romney.
Both claims seem farfetched, especial the claim that a former Cain adviser working for Perry was the leaker, This is because the adviser jumped ship after the Politico story broke.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that interviews with more than a dozen people paint a picture of his 1996-99 tenure at the National Restaurant Association that is at odds with his insistence that he never harassed anyone. Several people who worked at the association said they knew of episodes that women said had made them uncomfortable dealing with Cain.
Conservative pundits and bloggers rallied to Cain’s side and race cards were soon flying fast and furious. But as the week has gone on, the ardor from the print and Internet right has cooled, methinks because the guts of these pundits and bloggers have undergone a transformation similar to my own.
In a blog post with the headline “My Trip on the Cain Train Stops Here,” early Cain supporter Jimmie Bise said the candidate’s serial fuzzy memory and shifting responses made him look dishonest and made the new accusation seem “plausible.”
“These stories should never have gotten this far,” the Times quotes Bise as writing. “That they have is a testament to the utter incompetence of Herman Cain’s campaign team.”
Eric Erickson at RedState, who frequently leads the charge when the liberal media is perceived as picking on a conservative darling, initially called the Politico story a “hit job” but also is now distancing himself from Cain. Erickson is a former attorney who has dealt with sexual harassment cases and noted that even if the new allegation turned out to be false, there was no way Cain could defend himself against a credible accuser.
As it is, Cain appears more clueless by the week as his jalopy of a campaign lurches from rare appearance to rare appearance and it is likely that the Cain boomlet — which followed Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann and Perry boomlets as Republicans try to figure out who they like and who can beat President Obama — would have been over later rather than sooner.
Will the allegations hasten the end? Possibly, but one thing is for sure: No one is talking about Cain’s 9-9-9 tax “reform” plan, which is probably a good thing because Cain himself has yet to offer a credible explanation for this unvarnished flapdoodle.
19 Responses to “What Our Guts Now Tell Us About Herman Cain”
What the FACTS tell us about Herman Cain:
The accusations are false and most probably the result of a gold digger seeking a large settlement. Which she got. Now wants more.
That the Cain campaign worker probably did turn on Herman Cain, date of departure being irrelevant to say the least.
Even if true in it’s most scurrilous sense, it is irrelevant, because far to much time has passed anyway. Even larceny has a shorter statue of limitation.
Nothing left but the entertainment value. Run around the water cooler waving those panties over your head kind of entertainment.
I am baffled that anyone gave this clown any notice even before this “scandal”. Since when did we take these vanity runs seriously? And of all the things to derail his fraud of a candidacy, it had to be this nebulous sexual harassment claim from 15 years ago? Not on the merits of his ludicrous tax plan and other policies, but this uninteresting “scandal”?
One of our founders, I forget whom, said something like “in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.” Based on how we’ve treated the Cain candidacy (both the reason for the rise and the reason for the decline), clearly we fully deserve the dysfunction and collapse we are experiencing.
Allen:
I disagree with you in all respects.
“Facts” are a malleable good, but the “facts” point to Cain being a liar or an amnesiac.
The date of departure is relevant insofar as Cain is so desperate that he is madly flinging mud.
There is no statute of limitations for bad behavior on the part of a politician, especially one who advocates so-called family values.
Barky:
A bunch of people have said that or words to that effect, but Winston Churchill is the most cited.
Shaun-
These are all media reasons you give us Shaun. Not real world reasons. In a court of law, Herman Cain is acquitted with his retaliatory slander suits pending.
Talk about Conservative pundits speaking their guts.
Steve Deace, Iowa conservative radio talk show host:
“The fact that someone so uninformed and morally inconsistent has made it this far in a crucial Republican presidential primary, only to finally be vetted by his personal life, is an example of why so many Americans have lost faith in the system”
Allen:
Wrong again twice over. The Times story revealed that present and former NRA employees say there was a pattern of inappropriate behavior; in other words, more than three incidents. I go with The Times on this one.
Cain wouldn’t have a legal pot to piss in. If actionable, it would be libel and not slander. And as a high-visibility and very public person, he would not have the protection of libel laws, period.
Glad you are counting Shaun-
Liable-Slander, tomatoes potatoes….but rights are not superseded by the media. That’s only an assumption on your behalf.
Screw the Times, it’s a propaganda hack show. Show me the money, or proof as it were.
Allen:
I don’t have to show you jack. I am an expert on libel law. I have been involved as an a consultant in dozens of libel cases. I have been sued for libel. (Hung jury, out of court settlement on the advice of lawyers because it would be cheaper for the newspaper than a new trial.)
The big takeaway from my extensive experience — and every single libel lawyer would back me on this — is that Herman Cain relinquished his right to privacy when he announced that he was a candidate. As an aforementioned high-profile person, he has no — zero, zilch, nada — protection against knowingly false allegations and I daresay the allegations reported by The Times would not fall into that category even if Cain was a retired pizza exec who was quietly minding his own business as a private citizen.
You didn’t ask, but the libel case in which I was a defendant ended in a hung jury. There was an out-of-court settlement on the advice of our lawyers because that would be cheaper for the newspaper than a new trial.
The plaintiff was an obstetrician with a lousy track record who botched a delivery. As a result, the child came into the world with brain damage. The obstetrician was sued for medical malpractice and his insurance carrier had to fork over $3 million to the parents of the child. A condition of the settlement was that the court record be sealed, but the judge failed to order it sealed and my reporter found the record in researching an investigative story on how our state’s medical oversight board was dysfunctional. The story was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
All that noted, the obstetrician was a private citizen and therefore had a case that he had been libeled, although by strict definition of the state’s law, he had not been.
I thought candidate Clinton, B, would have been knocked out of contention when he had simultaneous accusations from Gennifer Flowers and charges of draft dodging. He wasn’t and that led to a fairly good presidency but with lots of dirt for reporters/journalists and late nite TV comedians to drool over.
Whats funny to me is that he comes up with a really awful 9-9-9 tax plan, openly professes that foreign relations is something he isn’t too concerned with, and approaches really complex issues with a sophistication level that seems to be aimed at the grade school demographic, but THIS is what is going to tank his campaign. Talk about screwed up priorities in the voters.
To paraphrase a line from The Godfather, I don’t care if he was banging cocktail waitresses two at a time, he never had the skills to be president and that is what should have mattered.
To me the Cain scandal has so far tracked similarly to the Anthony Weiner scandal – accusation made, Cain gets the benefit of the doubt at first, partisans jump to his defense, opposing partisans enjoy the fuss, Cain/Weiner make non-denial denials that sound increasingly unbelievable and inconsistent, more information trickles out. Eventually Weiner was run out of town and I suspect Cain will, too.
One difference of course is that while I didn’t agree with Weiner’s politics he did at least seem to be competent at his job, where Cain is hugely unqualified to be president in the first place.
Please let him be the nominee.
Please let him be the nominee.
Please let him be the nominee.
LOL, Vera!
The man is not qualified, yet those uber conservatives like him because he has a record of getting things done in the real world, has a good personality, threw a radical new idea out on the table, and is black. They want change and Cain would be about the most radical change that could be made, and no one could yell “racist party”.
The next Prez is going to be elected by the group in the middle that is not saying much right now. The far right is not going to like having Romney as their guy, but they will vote for him in the general election in a heartbeat, and so will all those quietly sitting and watching right now who are tired of Obama and the unfulfilled promises and assurances. He just doesn’t know what he is doing, and, unfortunately, neither do those who are advising him.
Cain, even if it wasn’t for the alleged sexual harrassment, would never have made it. He is a shooting star … a Roman candle. Pooof…he’s gone.
I don’t think he handled the press very well but but anyone listening to their gut telling them any more than that is reaching big time. We don’t even know any details at all to what the inappropriate behavior was, doesn’t seem to have been any direct employee/employer type of deal, and quite likely may just be as simple as a guy trying to flirt and be funny and bombing big time. It certainly doesn’t even get close to hitting the Bubba rule so why the heck are all these liberals so worried? What’s the Bubba rule?
let me just say that I would feel very uncomfortable to have our nation’s security in the hands of a commander-in-chief who couldn’t even handle this relatively minor flap, when the 3 am call comes that China (who has “yet to develop a nuclear capability”) has launched an attack on, say, Taiwan.
Many more politicians than I can count have had these rapid media accusatory questions thrown at them like gravel from under a running lawnmower. Few politicians, if any, handle them well. Shaun doesn’t know, he is just assuming. Hence “gut” in the title. So it is with 99% of the rest of the media fielding trick questions and other crap at Herman Cain.
That is a MAJOR part of our political problems, in my opinion. Lack of accountability from self promoting, ambitious media people, hiding behind far to liberal propaganda laws, doing big damage for little reasons.
Thank God Pat Buchannan was never elected.
And, I bet Cain has not even visited 57 states yet.
He was a proud board member of the Fed. What more do you need to know?