The Other McCain

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Herman Cain Wins 2012 Presidential Forum in Manchester, New Hampshire

Posted on | April 30, 2011 | 48 Comments

Of course, that’s not the headline you’ll see in the biased liberal media reports about the Americans for Prosperity forum last night. No, no — they’re all about Mitt Romneycare and Tim Cap-and-Trade Pawlenty. But make no mistake about it: Herman Cain won.

Steve Foley at Citizens for Cain passes along this item from a major New Hampshire political blog: An AFP poll taken after Friday’s event found that 62% of 975 respondents rated Cain the most effective speaker at the Manchester forum. Pawlenty was a distant second, with 17%.

Watch the video:

Isn’t it time you joined the online grassroots army at Citizens for Cain?

UPDATE: Guess who ignored Herman Cain’s appearance in Manchester? To repeat what I said before: “The ‘smart’ pundits will keep on saying he can’t win, right up until the moment when they start saying he can’t be beat.”

UPDATE II: Linked by Matt Newman at Race for 2012 — thanks!

UPDATE III: I’d like to call your attention to how the Atlantic Monthly‘s Joshua Green described Cain’s performance:

Herman Cain upstaged him by specifically calling to lower the corporate income tax, the personal income tax, temporarily abolish the payroll tax (individual and employer), abolish the capital gains tax, repatriate profits from overseas (abolishing any taxes on those profits), and, the coup de grace, declaring that all this would pay for itself by spurring economic growth.

Now, this is the straight-out supply-sider position and Green, a liberal, obviously takes a dim view of this argument as policy, terming it an “outlandish conservative fantasy.” In term terms of politics, however, Green’s liberalism doesn’t prevent him from acknowledging that Cain “upstaged” Pawlenty.

Green’s larger point is that “Romney was off in just about every facet of his performance” in what was viewed as Mitt’s unofficial 2012 campaign debut. So Romney stunk it up and Cain scored a “coup de grace” against Pawlenty — as even a liberal reporter could see.

UPDATE IV: Via John LaRosa on Twitter, an Associated Press article in the Boston Herald says “Cain got the evening’s biggest laugh.” And there’s also this report from Julie Hirschfield Davis of Bloomberg News:

The most enthusiastic reception was given to fast-food magnate Herman Cain, the onetime chairman of Godfather’s Pizza, whose preacher-like delivery of his five-point plan of lowering taxes and reining in spending drew frequent laughs and applause.

So he got the “biggest laugh” and the “most enthusiastic reception,” in addition to his 62% showing in the AFP poll. What part of “Cain won” is so hard to see here?

UPDATE V: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Speaking of Instapundit, he is featured in the latest episode of Bill Whittle’s PJTV show, about which The Lonely Conservative has some thoughts. I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m busy trying to update the breaking news of the latest NATO attack against Moammar Qaddafi.


Category: Debates, Election 2012, Herman Cain, New Hampshire, Polls

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