TIMOTHY NOAH SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
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Herman Cain fever! Have you caught it? Me neither. But for some reason this is his moment. A new Fox News poll conducted Sept. 25-27 actually places him third with 17 percent, up from 6 percent the month before. Cain seems to be catching some falling Rick Perry supporters and maybe a few disenchanted Bachmannites as well. Perry's crappy debate performance has finally caught up with him, driving his poll numbers down from 29 percent last month to 19 percent. Bachmann is down 5 points. Gingrich, up from 3 percent to 11 percent to place fourth after Cain, is apparently getting him some Perry-Bachmann love also. Romney, by retaining about the same level of support he's enjoyed since July--23 percent, down from 26 percent--has moved into the lead, vindicating his turtle-like strategy of slow and steady, steady and slow.
The thing about crazy people, I guess, is that they have a short attention span. They fall in love with Bachmann, then they fall in love with Perry, now they fall in love with Cain. It's good for Democrats that they aren't falling in love with Romney, who's looking more and more like the eventual nominee. Maybe they could find themselves some fringe candidate to mount a third-party challenge (heh, heh).
I feel like Chris Christie trying to give a speech about foreign policy. I'm having trouble staying on topic because don't actually have much to say about Herman Cain, except maybe that calling an eatery Godfather's Pizza ("a pizza you can't refuse") is a bit like calling it Shylock's Deli or Stagger Lee's Chicken Shack. I'm surprised he hasn't caught more heat about ethnic stereotyping from Italian-Americans. On the whole, I haven't paid him a lot of attention.
You know who else hasn't paid him a lot of attention? Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer interviewed Cain yesterday on CNN and the headline was that Cain said many African Americans have been "brainwashed" into rejecting conservatism. But what caught my attention was that after Cain said that "a third to 50 percent" of African Americans were sympathetic to his message Blitzer said: "You've suggested, correct me if I'm wrong, that if you were the Republican nominee, you think a third of African Americans would vote for you." Which suggests that Blitzer wasn't actually listening to Cain's previous answer, thereby recapitulating, unconsciously, Bob and Ray's classic Komodo Dragon routine.
8 comments
Herman Cain is having his fifteen minutes of fame after winning the Florida straw poll. He'd better enjoy it because he is not going to get anywhere near the nomination.
- liberalref
September 29, 2011 at 1:28pm
What libref said
- Tristan
September 29, 2011 at 2:20pm
What libref said
- Tristan
September 29, 2011 at 2:25pm
Absent Chris Christie (whom I don't expect to run), Cain is the final infatuation before the race follows its predictable path: Perry moderates his rhetoric, improves his debate performance, and develops a modicum of concrete policy proposals in preparation for taking Romney down a few notches. I still expect Perry to win. But...Cain's time in the limelight will have an influence. He'll push the others to develop specific, radical tax proposals--maybe not 999, but something like it.
- polcereal
September 29, 2011 at 3:20pm
Is TNR emplooying child labor? This reads as if a 13-year old was assigned to write five-paragraph current events for his homework, but got distracted and could only come up with four paragraphs of not very funny incoherence, and complete ignorance of GOP political factions. Timmy, find a topic you know something about. btw, Pillsbury owned Godfather's Pizza, and Herman Cain was assigned to make the division more profitable before he and a few others did a buyout, flavor du jour of the mid-90's in corporate America. Rather inspiring bootstrap story for the son of a chaffeur and maid in segregated Georgia.
- K2K
September 29, 2011 at 8:33pm
T. Noah writes at a far higher level than you do. Whatever accomplishments Herman Cain has to his credit, at present he is a fruitcake, and he is viciously anti-Muslim. It is your drivel that reads like a thirteen year-old wrote it. When you blather on about the Democratic Party, you sound as though you cribbed from material put out by the Coalition for a Democratic Majority in the 1970s. Nota bene, the current year is 2011.
- liberalref
September 29, 2011 at 9:09pm
The rise of Herman Cain is very good news... for Mitt Romney! Well, it is, really, for basically obvious reasons. Romney is the GOP candidate from Central Casting, and it looks like Central Casting (Chair: Rove, K. Deputy Chair: Ailes, R.) will be getting its man this year. Cain delivers the coup de grâce to Perry; maybe it's Palin or the sizeable shadow of Christie who gets to deliver it to Cain; and Romney somehow manages to sail by untouched. Unloved, maybe, but untouched.
- jcovell
September 29, 2011 at 10:23pm
K2K, Will Perry be undaunted by reality and insist that statistics are merely creations of "The [Liberal] Elite" and he is clearly the president The People (tm) want? Or will he shoot a coyote at a campaign event and start open-carrying a pistol at debates? Ooh - maybe he'll start making vague threats toward the other candidates so people will know he means business. You being the resident Perry expert, I thought you might have insight. Inquiring minds want to know.
- tealeaves
September 30, 2011 at 1:27pm