The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Don’t Overthink It, Byron

Posted on | May 16, 2011 | 20 Comments

Byron York has a wonderful interview with Herman Cain, keying off the South Carolina debate:

Republican pollster Frank Luntz conducted a focus group on Fox News and found near-unanimous agreement that Cain was the winner. “I’ve done maybe 35 or 40 of these debates for Fox, and I’ve never had this kind of reaction,” Luntz said. “Something very special happened this evening.”
Many political insiders viewed the debate mostly as an opportunity for former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty to move up into the first tier of GOP candidates. Instead, people left Greenville’s Peace Center talking about Herman Cain — a result that few participants, including Cain himself, could have predicted.

Well, I may not be one of those “political insiders,” but having predicted Cain’s South Carolina debate victory in advance, I’m surprised that Byron York didn’t give me a call to say, “Stacy, how did you know? What is the secret of your insightful prescience?”

Never mind the un-asked questions, however. Byron then whips out the Rorshach inblot analysis:

A mostly unspoken but possibly consequential factor in Cain’s appeal to conservative voters is his race. Cain is a black Republican — a pretty rare thing in itself — seeking to challenge the nation’s first black president. . . .
[M]any Republicans have internalized the Democratic/liberal criticism that they oppose Obama because he is black and that whenever they attack the president on this or that issue, the real motivation behind it is race. Herman Cain, they believe, could take it to Obama without all that racial baggage.

Byron, you’re thinking too hard, man. Leave the psychobabble to the liberals, who specialize in that kind of stuff.

People like Herman Cain because — wait for it — they like Herman Cain.

He’s an immensely likeable guy, as was obvious to anyone hanging around the lobby bar before CPAC:

After Cain arrived last night, he was quickly surrounded by CPAC attendees eager to shake his hand and get their photos taken with the guy I introduced to my friends as The Next President of the United States.

You don’t have to be a “political insider” or a Ph.D. psychologist to see that kind of stuff. Ordinary Americans don’t think like intellectuals think, which is why the alleged experts are so often mystified by simple phenomena. (Basic economics, for example. Paul Krugman’s got a Nobel Prize and still can’t figure out why Keynesianism doesn’t work.)

If we have to “go there” with the race issue, I like what Andrew Breitbart said in his Heritage Foundation speech:

Breitbart . . . wants radio host Herman Cain and Freshman Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) on the 2012 GOP ticket. . . .
“The only way to defeat political correctness and cultural marxism and multiculturalism is to aim straight at its head,” Breitbart said.

The beauty of the Breitbart approach is that liberals see a quote like that and say to themselves, “Give me a break. They wouldn’t actually do that, would they?”

Because it’s too damned simple. It’s like the fullback dive on fourth-and-goal. But the fullback dive is the perfect play, if you have confidence in your team. Forget the razzle-dazzle — just give the ball to the fullback and run it right at ‘em.

There’s no point worrying about the psychological symbolism of a Cain candidacy when you consider the likely alternative. What all the clever GOP pundits like Charles Krauthammer want to do is to re-run the Bob Dole ’96 campaign: Find some bland non-entity, hire a bunch of speechwriters and consultants, and run a boring, predictable campaign that ends in defeat so that, four years later, Republicans nominate somebody named “Bush.”

Screw that noise. Here’s what I wrote on Nov. 13, 2010:

[I]f you want a successful businessman for the 2012 GOP nomination, how about a dark horse? . . .
Yeah: Herman Cain. Having backed a few can’t-possibly-win underdogs in the past couple of years — I went all-in for Rubio when he was 35 points down — I’m taking a long, hard look at that dark horse.

People thought I was crazy. Mainly because I am crazy, but sometimes the smartest move you can make is to do something that everybody else says is crazy. Now here we are, six months later: Herman Cain won the first big GOP debate, he’s got Andrew Breitbart in his corner, and Byron York is making the pilgrimage to Atlanta to interview the candidate that none of the experts thought would be a major factor in 2012.

Somebody ought to hit the hell out of my tip jar. This kind of insightful prescience has got to be worth something.

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Category: Election 2012, Herman Cain

Comments

  • DaveO

    Herman Cain’s electability is tied to how well the Senate and House races go. Mr. Cain is a good communicator, and a great manager, and has rock-solid ideas. But, how well would he do working with Speaker Boehner, or (gasp of horror) Speaker Pelosi? With Majority Leader Reid or McConnell? Could he get his select team through the Senate gauntlet? 

  • http://www.bcarr.com Brendon Carr

    One has to imagine that Herman Cain may previously in his career had to get buy-in on his ideas from entrenched interests. One of the key things about working with franchise businesses is that the headquarters element does not own the stores.  They’re independently owned and operated businesses. Part of making change in a franchise-business situation is coming up with the right idea and then persuading those independent owners of the rightness of the idea.

  • http://www.bcarr.com Brendon Carr

    One has to imagine that Herman Cain may previously in his career had to get buy-in on his ideas from entrenched interests. One of the key things about working with franchise businesses is that the headquarters element does not own the stores.  They’re independently owned and operated businesses. Part of making change in a franchise-business situation is coming up with the right idea and then persuading those independent owners of the rightness of the idea.

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  • Joe

    You can’t bottle magic.   If Cain has it, and I believe he does, he will go much farther than those who do not. 

    He will still need a few breaks, good strategy and discipline, and all the rest.  But trust me, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty wish they had the Cain mojo.

  • DaveO

    Brendon, good point but I disagree with you because of the mindset.

    All of those franchise owners were betting their own cash, and Cain matched it with the corporations. Both sides were in it to win it. Senators, Representatives, and Justices/Judges bet everyone else’s money. With the pro-incumbent rules and gerrymandering, many Senators and Representatives (as well as the Justices/Judges) are essentially appointed for life. 3d-Party Money + Lifetime Sinecure = different mindset.

    Different mindset means a different ballgame. 

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    I’m worried about three things.

    1. There’s a leftist meme starting up already that Pillsbury hired Herman Cain to run Godfather’s Pizza, and “he promptly ran it into the ground”.

    True, False, or somewhere in between?

    2. How long was he on the Federal Reserve Board, and how loyal and devoted is he to the Fed and that system?

    3. His health.

    He needs to address the first two questions, particularly the second one.

  • dave the cpa guy

    1.  Herman Cain saved Godfather’s Pizza and subsequently bought it.

    2.  He was on the citizens advisory board.  I.e. a board full of business people….different than the voting Fed Governors (i.e. Bernanke and his crew).

    He was at one of the more conservative Fed banks.  Not all the banks agree with each other on policy decisions.  Additionally, it is important to know that the Fed acts in response to government action.  QE2 barely passed through the Fed voting process.   It was seen as necessary to counteract the actions of the Treasury and Congress.  So far they have responded well during the credit crisis.  However, Geithner, then a part of the NY Fed, really dropped the ball on the Lehman Brothers problem.

    The Fed is not some secret organization.

    Look on Youtube for his Fed explanation:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caeNXivEGEg

    3.  Seems fine.  In remission. 

  • dave the cpa guy

    1.  Herman Cain saved Godfather’s Pizza and subsequently bought it.

    2.  He was on the citizens advisory board.  I.e. a board full of business people….different than the voting Fed Governors (i.e. Bernanke and his crew).

    He was at one of the more conservative Fed banks.  Not all the banks agree with each other on policy decisions.  Additionally, it is important to know that the Fed acts in response to government action.  QE2 barely passed through the Fed voting process.   It was seen as necessary to counteract the actions of the Treasury and Congress.  So far they have responded well during the credit crisis.  However, Geithner, then a part of the NY Fed, really dropped the ball on the Lehman Brothers problem.

    The Fed is not some secret organization.

    Look on Youtube for his Fed explanation:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caeNXivEGEg

    3.  Seems fine.  In remission. 

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

     Thanks Dave.

  • http://www.bcarr.com Brendon Carr

    Dave, according to the Cain biography, he was not simply invited to the Kansas City Fed citizens’ advisory board, but gained the confidence of the Board of Directors to the degree that Herman Cain was elected to serve as the Kansas City Fed’s chairman for two years.

    Cain has been a defender of the Federal Reserve System. A search for the terms “Herman Cain” + “Federal Reserve” will turn up a bunch of hits repeating the phrase “Herman Cain…flippantly denies the need to audit the Federal Reserve” in connection with an episode of the Neal Boortz radio show where Cain filled in as a host one night last December.

    I listened to the clip. Didn’t sound all that flippant to me. Cain sounded informed, reasonable, and exasperated by the proposition that he had been duped into serving some kind of conspiracy. Of course, that’s Just What They Want Us To Believe™.

  • gg

    The republican base just loves some black on black action for a change after the old white war hero and his trojan “Lool! I have a vagina!”  lady were given a ass-whooping  of electoral proportions in the last installment, don’t they?

  • Anonymous

     Forget wrong, you don’t even rise to the level of coherent.

    Take your meds, you fucking wanker.

  • Anamika

    Little Randy needs some urgent attention. He must be out of pills and burst a blood vessel.

  • Anonymous

     I prescribe one dose of banhammer for this affliction.

  • gg

    Look at yourself in the mirror, you fucking fat bastard. Go eat Randy’s cock for breakfast. Now delete this comment — quick! — you pathetic excuse for a moderator.

  • gg

    Btw you are at school at your age?   How does that make you feel; young?

     What classes you are enrolled in, i wonder. I hope you learned how to Google and use hyperlinks.

    No summer classes though, it seems. Why don’t you take a break and go, maybe to, Montreal? 

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  • http://twitter.com/jimmiebjr Jimmie

     ”Inkblot”

  • Anonymous

     The scores of web hits are the Paulistas at play, I suspect.  They clearly fear Herman Cain, as Mr. Cain’s campaign is getting close to critical mass.  Their “End the Fed” = conservative meme is now out in full force.
     
    Mr. Cain will happily take on any questions, but the Paulistas are unlikely to listen or give up twisting the point to their unicorn logic.  Mr. Cain has often said that it is not that he isn’t against a public audit, he simply sees no added value…particularly in light of the REST of the issues at present.  His strategic vision is simply much different.He has also said that his time on the Fed board was one of his more enlightening and instructive times, learning about monetary and fiscal policy from that angle.  Mr. Cain supports a return to the gold standard to boot.  This bolsters the point that he disagrees with “The Fed” in today’s flavor, not necessarily with the fundamental, original vision of its core function and purpose.So anyway ask, just what kind of guy would YOU prefer to reform the role of the Federal Reserve, much less the role of government at large with respect to its relationship with private businesses and private citizens?I like that Herman Cain has a complete version of “been there, done that” at all levels of society.  Being a successful private citizen IS public service!

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