Herman Cain is now the runaway frontrunner in the GOP field, leaving many in the Establishment to conclude, grumpily, that Mitt Romney is the inevitable nominee.
That says something about Republicans, doesn’t it?
So will the Establishment knives come out for Cain now, or will they let him ride the wave for awhile? And if the latter, how long will “awhile” be?
New Hampshire is threatening to move its primary to this December, and South Carolina, Florida, and Nevada are in January. That’s really not a lot of time. If Cain takes any two of those, it’s going to be harder to bump him off later. If he takes three, the GOP may have a runaway train on its hands that it cannot stop.
So I’m betting they knives will come out in the next few days; possibly as early as next week.
They may be hoping he will self-destruct as Perry has, but I’m guessing Cain possibly has one or two more working brain cells than Perry. You can say the same thing about shrubbery, of course. But just a little smarts goes a long, long way on the Right, as long as it’s not overdone.
Steve Kornacki provides reasons why Cain can’t win the nomination, but at least two of those — that he says stupid things and his policy proposals are ridiculous — is true of every candidate in America with an R after his name. I think he is less likely to stumble under the front-runner spotlight than Perry stumbled, as long as he continues to pretend racism is no longer a problem in America.
His being African American is part of his appeal, I’m sure. Righties have reached a point in their intellectual evolution at which they understand that racism is bad, even if they aren’t sure what it is. Today, “That he’s a black man who eagerly absolves the GOP’s Obama-era base of any suspicion of racial animus may have something to do with his appeal,” Kornacki writes.
Kornacki looks at Cain’s recent debate performance:
How would he have handled a sharp follow-up on, say, his claim that Alan Greenspan is a good model for a future Fed chairman? Or his claim that he has “secret†appointees in mind for key positions but that he won’t reveal their identities? Cain gives the impression that he has a few basic talking points but that he’s winging it otherwise. That’s a recipe for disaster.
It’s only a recipe for disaster if the bobbleheads on Faux and flapping mouths like Rush Limbaugh say it’s a disaster; otherwise, the baggers will be fine with it. They don’t understand any of it, so as long as they sense a general agreement that what Cain says is reasonable, then it’s reasonable. And from what I can tell from a Google search, Rush seems to like Cain.
I think Republicans like Cain because they feel have some idea of what he is talking about. Anytime anyone says something slightly specific that wingers like, Cain will say “that’s in my 999 planâ€. When things get boring during the debates, he just starts yelling about his 999 plan. And it’s a simple, retro, un-focus-grouped name.
Cain doesn’t get drawn into discussions of HPV or QEII or Uz-beki-beki-stan-stan-stan or stuff his audience doesn’t understand. He doesn’t fall asleep on stage like Gingrich and Perry. He’s the only guy avoiding both of these traps, and that’s why he’s winning in a lot of polls.
All he has to do is (1) not say anything about racism, except that it isn’t a problem; and (2) give no hint that he might have a twinge of compassion for anybody who isn’t as wealthy as he is, and he could ride a big enough wave to get him through the early primaries. The Establishment has got to be nervous.