There. I said it. Here’s some evidence to back it up.
On the issue of collective bargaining, Cain said he supported the right of public employees to bargain collectively.
“But not collective hijacking. What I mean by that, if they have gotten so much for so many years and it’s going to bankrupt the state, I don’t think that’s good. It appears that in some instances, they really don’t care.”
Asked about last week’s vote in Ohio, in which the state’s new collective bargaining law was rejected by voters, Cain said that “maybe they tried to get too much and as a result it failed.”
Asked if the Ohio Legislature had gone too far in stripping collective bargaining rights for public employees, including fire and police personnel, Cain said that Ohio legislators “may have tried to get too much in one bill.”
Ohio’s collective bargaining law differed from Wisconsin in at least one key aspect: Wisconsin exempted police and fire personnel from the law.
In an interview with the Journal Sentinel last month, Cain said that he was “right in the corner of Gov. Scott Walker 100%” in Walker’s battle with public employee unions.
Cain also appeared to be unclear on the issue of collective bargaining as it involves federal employees. Asked if he thought federal employees should have the ability to bargain collectively, Cain said: “They already have it, don’t they?”
Told they didn’t, he said, “They have unions.”
The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 600,000 federal government workers in 65 agencies, says that most federal employees don’t have collective bargaining over pay and benefits.
They do have collective bargaining rights over working conditions.
Ace has the video, so you can see that the article isn’t being unfair to him.
Cain also said that government worker unions should have collective bargaining power as long as it doesn’t create an undue burden on the taxpayers. That’s only what the entire, very loud and very visible, union battles in Wisconsin in Ohio and elsewhere have been about. It’s about that plus how the unions use Democrats and Democrats use unions to keep campaign money flowing from the taxpayers to the unions to the Democratic Party, so they can keep handing everything over that unions want. That’s how they’re bankrupting states while bargaining themselves into lavish benefits packages that most in the private sector can only dream of.
In Saturday’s debate on foreign policy, Cain couldn’t get a coherent answer out except to say that he would rely on advisers. That’s fine up to a point, but what if your advisers don’t agree? If you don’t fill the room with robots and yes-men and women, that’s a problem. POTUS is supposed to be the decider. I half expected him to answer whether he would let Iran have nukes in German — “Nein, nein, nein” — just to work his catchphrase into the debate. He punted to Gingrich in the one-on-one debate, didn’t know what the “right of return” was and doesn’t seem to understand that the right to bear arms isn’t a state issue. It’s in the Constitution. And then there’s the abortion answer, which still doesn’t make any sense.
In the interview linked above, he also dithers around on Libya, saying he had “All of this stuff twirling around in my head.” And that’s the beginning of the problems with his answer on Libya.
His 9-9-9 plan opens up a new stream for the federal government to confiscate your money — a national sales tax. He said he would release terrorists from Gitmo to get one American returned, until the blowback told him that that was the wrong answer. You can almost imagine him in the conference room saying “Was that wrong? When I said I would let all those hard core terrorists out of Gitmo, and signaled how al Qaeda could get Khalid Sheikh Mohammed out of jail if they want him? Should I not have said that?”
When I met Cain in Austin, TX a few months ago I wanted him to do well. I would love to see all the GOP candidates do well and show that they’re more than just debate figureheads, that they’re actually conservatives and capable of leading when the cameras aren’t around. But I’ve come to the conclusion, reluctantly, that Herman Cain just isn’t that well informed and isn’t that quick a study. His instincts aren’t that conservative and he has trouble getting beyond platitudes to the meat of most issues. He’s a fairly typical big corporate guy, actually, a bit surer of himself and his ability to talk his way around issues than he should be.
Update: Is Cain’s campaign capable of coming up with a convincing explanation for his Libya and public union whiffs? Um, nein. Nein. Nein.
Ah, Mr. Preston. Good to see PJM’s resident RINO hasn’t lost his touch. Let it go already, won’t yah? You and your ilk have already accomplished your mission to knock Cain down in the polls and “put him in his place.” Still, John Huntsman is not going to be the GOP nominee and Obama isn’t getting reelected. All of your efforts are for naught.
I’ve been saying for some time that Cain is the right’s Obama; nice line of talk, no experience.
We do not need to nominate, let alone elect, Blooper Reel #2, and our Blooper Reel is not going to beat their Blooper Real.
Uh-oh, I’ve noticed over the past week that it has become more fashionable to criticize Cain, that must mean he’s on the down hill slide. I’ve criticized him too, one of the few brave enough to do so a week or two ago (well, ok, it doesn’t require bravery to be one of thousands offering comments in relative anonymity).
I like Cain, he’s a great American, has a great personality, but Obama will easily match him on the issues in debates as Obama pretends to be moderate. Newt I think is the man, he’s got it all together. I believe the pace will now quicken, Romney will hold his 25-30 percent and Newt will plow to the clear frontrunner position. I believe Newt is smart enough to avoid land mines, let’s hope so.
Well, he’s conservative once he remembers or is prompted about what the talk radio talking points are. Until then, not so much. Not that he’s liberal either. He’s general more conservative than liberal, but always more Herman than anything else. What he certainly is not is a conservative theorist.
As Buzz says at #1, there are too many unnerving similarities with the boy king for my taste.
betcha he knows about the dept of energy. by the way wtf was baracky up to in deposing the rulers of egypt and libya, regimes nominally friendly to the usa, in 30 seconds please?
‘Scuse me?
Libya? Friendly to the US?
Muammar Gaddafi? A friend of the USA?
Remember PanAm flight 103?
Go do some research, then perhaps you can write a comment that makes sense.
“But I’ve come to the conclusion, reluctantly…”
Oh, spare us the posturing! The way you were hanging on every bit of the Politico hit job was a bit too obvious to make this “so, in sadness I turn away” bit fly.
You never supported him. That’s OK. Just don’t insult our intelligence.
Wow. Obviously the conservative blogosphere has decided to jettison Herman Cain. You didn’t need to be so obvious about it. Sheesh. Wall to wall slander across the entire spectrum. Didn’t realize until now you all were so coordinated? Who issued the order anyway?
A rootin’ tootin’ guns-are-our-friends Texan friend of mine predicted Cain would self-destruct like this. He didn’t call exactly what form it would take, but he accurately predicted it as some foot-in-mouth, I-can’t-believe-he-said-that, utterly obvious sets-off-all-conservatives and blatantly ignorant foot-in-mouth statement. He said it would differ from Governor Perry’s “shameful” categorization of opposition to resident tuition for illegal aliens only by being due to unthinking ignorance by Cain as opposed to Perry’s informed and intentional (but politically suicidal) statement.
Public sector union collective bargaining is like players bargaining with their agents, the politicians, not the taxpayers who write the checks. Politicians don’t foot the bill and can anticipate votes and campaign contributions.
Herman Cain is an impressive American success story, seems like a likeable personality, and strikes me as clearly being over his head in this arena. A president is the nation’s chief foreign policy architect, leading from the front and having done his basic foreign affairs homework before the cameras and mics are turned on; I expect at least a substantive overview from a candidate at this stage, not “my advisors will look into it.” China, Iran and others are watching too.
You’re not going to outrun the competition if you’re running with a Cain.
Bryan – Can’t disagree with you. Mr. Cain has had a whole lot of time to prepare, but he seems incapable or unwilling to take the time out to do so. Buzzsawmonkey is correct on this one – Mr. Cain is the Right’s Obama.
My heart sank when I saw the video. I was very enthused about Cain for the past four weeks. I’m willing to give him a pass on foreign policy but collective bargaining reform is such a critical element to controlling government spending that there is just no excuse for it. Especially when Romney had already gotten flack for supporting reform in Ohio before he was ambivalent to it before he supported it.
I still like Herman. Maybe he should run for senator again.
Molly,
I want candidates to alert voters about public sector pension bombs set to go off in municipalities nationwide, packages towns, cities and states can’t honor absent more borrowing.
OK, I guess we’ll just have to draft Palin….
Cain’s incuriosity about major political issues outside of the economy and tax reform is interesting and perplexing. Not knowing a few issues at the outset of the campaign could be explained away as not being up to speed on all this issues yet, especially for someone coming from the domestic business world, but most people when confronted with a question or issue they don’t know would strive to bone up on the topic(s), especially if it’s likely the same questions and issues will come up again in the future.
Cain doesn’t. He seems content to keep his campaign on a very narrow focus and worry about the outside details later. Which in itself is worrying, because that resembles the current White House office holder, who cares about income redistribution and little else, and as a result, is detached from anything that doesn’t involve giving him a chance to spend other people’s money.
Cain would be far better on the economy than Obama, but short of going Jerry Sandusky on us, Obama can pretty much foul up as much as he wants and never get called on it by the majority of the big media. A Herman Cain who was detached from all but a few issues he cared about wouldn’t get the same sort of cover from the media if he made it to the White House.
That is one of the reasons I say, in #1, that he is the right’s Obama.
Is it possible that age may be a concern in Cain’s case? I actually never knew how old he was until today when that idea struck me, so I looked it up and discovered that, if elected, he will have turned 67 before he takes the oath of office. That is not horribly old, but you know, I’m only 53 and have kept myself in good shape and hell, I’m starting to feel my stamina and mental sharpness declining. Campaigns are messy but they do serve to highlight candidates’ weaknesses, and I do wonder if Cain’s age is starting to show as such a weakness. Sad to say, IMHO it is definitely showing for Ron Paul this time around. Maybe for Herman too.
Speaking as a guy that sent Cain a little money a few weeks back as a token of support, I have to admit that the more I see, the less impressed I am.
Perry, too.
And what’s even stranger is that as a guy that hated Newt Gingrich, I have to admit the guy knows what’s going on.
Putting Gingrich in the WH would be worth it just to see the 1990s Clinton defenders’ heads explode.
I’m glad I only sent Cain $35 bucks. I believe there are a couple million people like me who are now holding our cash until the smoke clears. I hope Newt doesn’t get caught with his pants down because he is my choice now as well.
Yeah, Perry’s implosion has been spectacular (I’ll be honest, though– I live in Texas, and I always thought he was more hype then substance), while Cain’s has been a slow fizzle, like letting the air out of a balloon. Gingrich would make an awesome VP choice– I don’t think he’s likeable enough to actually win outright, though.
Sigh. We’re going to get Romney, aren’t we?
Regardless of how the Cain adventure plays out we need to keep him near the top, or seemingly so. The purpose, to confound the Donks into habitual mischief. The more they are exposed for the incompetents they are the better chance they’ll float into oblivion.
You are a Perry supporter. You want to talk about someone who doesn’t know what they are talking about. You need to look at the other candidates, because Perry is not going to get the nomination, he blew it, and I’m from Texas.
I got off the Cain train a long, long time ago once I realized he usually doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I have said this a few times already, but I really do expect the candidates I support to know at least as much as I do about the issues – and Cain knows far, far less. I never thought he had a realistic shot at the nomination, even when he was surging in the polls.
I still support Perry because I like his flat tax plan better than anything anyone else has come up with. But I could live with Gingrich if push came to shove. I just won’t vote for Romney. Truth be told, I wouldn’t have voted for Cain, either.
You would choose four more years of Obama rather than vote for Romney?
“You would choose four more years of Obama rather than vote for Romney?”
Hell yes, I’d no more vote for Romney than I would a Scientologist or Rosicrucian.
Please, no cultmembers with access to thermonuclear weapons.
I wouldn’t vote for Romney, either…but let’s leave religion out of it. The fact that he has never seen an issue he couldn’t take both sides of is enough. Plus, he apparently told NARAL he’d work as a liberal in conservative clothing if elected to national office.
And I wouldn’t be choosing Obama over Romney. I’d be choosing a third party candidate over both of them.
I have fallen for that “if you don’t vote for X, you’re voting for the Democrat” line before – in 6 previous presidential elections, in fact. I’m not a GOP drone anymore. If they want my vote, they’ll earn it. And nominating Romney is an expression of contempt for my vote.