The rise - and rise - of Herman Cain may be catching people off guard; I'm not exactly surprised, though mostly I think it hardly matters. Herman Cain is not going to become President.
Cain is the retired CEO of Godfather's Pizza, which might be more easily referred to as "one of those lesser known regional chains" to put Cain's general sense of his own importance into perspective. One thing about that pesky "CEO" title is that it's less hard to have one than one might think.
There's also no reason to ignore the main selling point of Cain's appeal, beyond a populist conservative message: Cain helps this year's GOP immensely by putting a prominent black Republican into the mix. Without him, the stage is a lot of old white men, and a really attractive brunette lady (and as we know, there's only room for one of those, too; and I don't just mean Sarah Palin. We could even go back to Elizabeth Dole).
In my own secret fantasy of a Presidential campaign next year that might at least be interesting, I have to admit dreaming of an Obama vs. Cain match-up. It's the only potential race with some real wild cards: how do you assess the black vote? What happens to everyone's familiar complaints about southern Republicans being racists? How does Obama succeed when his trump card - the one where he's not a person, but more of a symbol - is largely neutralized?
It's fun to speculate... but mostly it's just a dream. Cain can't win, and even he seems somewhat aware of it.
Cain's the candidate who has actually been tapping most strongly into the real resevoir's of Tea Party anger, and giving it a voice. Even Michelle Bachmann, for all her deliberate courting, doesn't have Cain's natural edge that comes from being the only actual DC, non-governmental outsider in the mix. Cain's biggest success has been speaking to audiences without the usual veneer of political niceties, where everything is stated just vaguely enough that one position can easily morph into its opposite.Cain's much more about tyhe certainties, the "I know what I know: approach, and he's not just talking up limited government and pro-business approaches because its Republican boilerplate. He does, genuinely, believe it.
Cain's also offered up just about the only concrete plan for tax policy on either side of the 2012 debate, the oft-repeated "9-9-9" plan, which is shorthand for a 9% flat rate income tax, a 9% corporate tax rate and a 9% national sales tax with some modest exceptions. It's kind of like every crazy Republican idea - flat tax! almost no corporate taxes! no deductions! no loopholes! - rolled into a ball, with the added sheen of VAT, the tax that tax policy people are very sttracted to but nearly every person who votes, hates.
Cain's plain spoken qualities, combined with some great backstory, as well as that wild card appeal of Republicans coming up with a black man to challenge Obama, probably accounts for Cain coalescing into the anti-Romney. He's been helped immensely by the fact that other darlings have either flamed out (Bachmann and Perry) or opted out (Christie et al). Cain, in fact, probably helped feed Perry's fall by being pretty much as outraged or more than other prominent black voices over that "N-head" stone in Perry's yard, a good gauntlet to throw when some liberals think "black republican" is synonoymous with "i'd like to be white". In a world of few good choices... Cain looks, well, interesting.
If only that were enough. Cain's no-nonsenseness looks great on domestic economic issues, but beyond that he tends to fade. He's virtually nowhere on foreign policy (and he's surprisingly negative on wars like Iraq and Afghanistan), and shows little interest in wading into complexities and nuance, where much of our foreign policy problems live. As well, Cain's appeal, as it turns out, is about where you'd think it'd be: it's the older, retired, educated talk show listening male crowd of the shows that brought him to prominence, like Limbaugh and Hannity. Cain's support among women is lighter, and it's hard to see how he appeals to moderates. That may be no big deal just now, when it's all about that deeply conservative base.... but at some point, women who shop for their family's everyday necessities are going to speak up about just what a terrible idea a nine percent sales tax would be for them. And without that, what Cain is raising is mostly hot air.
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