Nate Silver notes the Cain surge after the exits of several other GOP presidential candidates.
What’s especially interesting about Mr. Cain’s standing is that he polls at 8 percent despite being familiar to only about one-third of Republican voters, according to supplementary Gallup data. Of those voters who are familiar with him, 24 percent have him as their first choice. That’s the best figure for any candidate in the Republican field.
Those numbers tell us that Cain does very well with the Republicans who are familiar with him, and that he has a lot of room to grow just by making himself more visible and therefore more familiar. And in Cain’s case, familiarity doesn’t breed contempt. He speaks with conviction and spontaneity and with gravitas. The “right of return” answer from last weekend showed that he needs to get a bit stronger on foreign policy, but otherwise he’s off to a great start.
And the current administration is better at foreign policy? Let’s go guys…we have Cincinattus ready to give up his plow and we pile on because he is not an “educated elite”? The man know how to run an entity, and is not a marxist zealot.
Herman Cain is already catching flack, in particular from the Paulistas, who for some reason seem to have marked him as their bitterest foe in this campaign. Their favored meme is to decry him as a former Fed Chairman and a supporter of TARP. Well, I have bad news for them, but he answered those questions, and others, frankly and quite satisfactorily, in this great interview on Glenn Beck’s radio show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoNIjGU5fbY
As for his bobble on the Right of Return issue, Cain will not likely again make the mistake of stepping away from his policy of not answering questions for which he has no reasoned response. It certainly doesn’t disqualify him, no matter what those opposed to his run may wish.
Things are looking good for Herman Cain! =^[.]^=
I’ve noticed the Paulista fed-related attacks on Cain. It’s as if they go out of their way to pick the most obscure issues to attack on.
Bryan,
The Fed is not an obscure issue for the Paulistas. Trust me.
Oh I know. It’s just obscure to everyone else, at least as a basis for rabid attacks.
Can you imagine how many leftist brains would explode if Herman Cain and Allen West headed up the Republican ticket in 2012?
My problem with the “right of return” response wasn’t simply that he bobbled it, because he didn’t just bobble it — he BSed his way through it. Then he later admitted that he didn’t know what the “right of return” was, and he’d NEVER BS his way through an answer.
Sorry, Herman, you already did.
If a candidate wants to say he’d never BS, then he’d better never BS. Especially if he’s as bad at BSing as Cain is.
Do we expect candidates to know everything about everything? No, that’s why presidents have advisers and cabinet members. He could’ve said that and it would’ve been honest. He could’ve ASKED Wallace to define what he meant by the “right of return,” since a) he obviously didn’t know what it meant, and b) even applied to the Mid East it can have at least two different meanings.
Asking for clarification doesn’t make a candidate look bad. BSing does.
As much as I like Cain, that response dimmed him in my eyes. Not nearly down to Newt or Romney level, but it certainly drops him from my #1 spot.
I had the same thought when I saw his response. I thought everyone that reads a newspaper knows what right of return refers to as it relates to Israel. But as with you, it doesn’t drag him down to the level of Mitt or Gingrich in my eyes. He’s right behind Sara in my POTUS preference at this point. Could change though.
Normally, I’d say his lack of foreign policy knowledge would disqualify him in my mind. Foreign affairs is specifically the President’s purview.
However, the current fiscal crisis has become an existential threat. It can no longer be put off. It is caused by government and must be stopped. The enemy is already ashore.
For all the knocks on Palin, about her lack of knowledge, she has yet to take an incorrect stance on foreign policy. Same goes for domestic policy. For this reason, I prefer her to Cain. He’d make a good VP for her.
Still, if he is the nominee, I could live with it. It hands an enormous advantage to Obama during debates, though. The Leftists will focus on foreign policy, avoiding domestic failures as much as possible, and Cain will come up short. Obama will have had several years of daily briefings to get him knowledgable, or at least credible, on foreign policy.
This is why Palin has a new foreign-policy advisor… to make sure she is up to speed. She is giving herself the same advantage the President has.
By the way, if you wonder if she will run or not, what non-candidate even has a foreign-policy advisor? Of course she is running. These guys do not work cheap, y’know.
He’s said many times that he isn’t familiar with a lot of the foreign policy items. He said it’s virtually impossible to say what you would do without all of the inside info a President has. Note the changes in Obama’s stances after he was sworn in. He isn’t afraid to say he is wrong; he’s a problem-solver – check out his biography. A wonderful man who loves this country, is smart, practical, and organized. Integrity. Conservative.
What more do you want. He’s the man!!!
I like Herman Cain, and think he’s a better and more interesting choice than the other bland GOP offerings. However, despite his growing popularity, I don’t see the GOP elite supporting an outsider with no political connections.
I also foresee a no-holds-barred smear campaign against him by the Left in order to keep Cain from winning the nomination. Why? Because a black GOP candidate would neutralize the ‘race card’ for the Democrats, and the last thing they want is to have to run on Obama’s record.
It’s Cain in 2012 or Obama until 16.
bank on it.
Herman Cain has already said that he would solve problems like successful businesses do, and that would include foreign affairs. Personally, I like Ross Perot’s model: “We’ll give you the same deal you give us”. In the business world, this is pretty much how it’s done.
Run, Herman, Run!