I try to imagine a scenario where I would keep a female friend my wife was unaware of, meet her and communicate with her with some regularity over thirteen years, give her money on a number of occasions, all of which my wife also knew nothing about.

I would never DO it, but I can’t think of any possible reason for the secrecy or the money except the one.  Can you?  Really, with a straight face?

BUT even if I could, WHY would I respond to a question about how much money I gave this woman by saying, “On advice of counsel, I can’t answer that”?  Was it illegal in some way?  Or is the amount so eye-raising that it would likely figure prominently in a divorce complaint (and settlement)?

I just can’t think of any innocent reason for that, though.  Can you?

There are a number of incidents where an innocent man managed to get charged or even convicted of a crime because his actions all LOOKED guilty to any normal observer, so let’s leave that door open.  But if somebody could walk me through how it all happens this way, with Cain looking guilty and telling lies over and over and again and again, and it turns out he he isn’t, I’d sure appreciate it.

Yet his supporters have attacked the messengers relentlessly as if Cain were as pure as the driven snow.  The media generally deserves the poor treatment just for their long habit of scandal bias, but the accusers were assailed in ways that would make Paul Begala and Lanny Davis and Ann Lewis smile and tip their hats. 

And both Romney and Perry have been pretty much directly accused of being behind the scandals, in both cases without a single shred of evidence other than somebody who once worked for Cain now works for Perry, and even the Cain camp retracted that accusation (well, Block did, then Cain halfway reinstated it, because the lying horn dog can’t keep a story straight for more than one hour).

Disgraceful.

I hope within 24 hours to be able to report that the entire Cain
campaign staff have taken their quarrels with them on the way to the
unemployment office.

RSM I think you’re going to get your wish very soon now.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/02/cain-journey-part-of-gods-plan/

Looks like Cain is staying in the race.  Thank Goodness.

Sure, his campaign might need a bit of work (I’m not sure how  feasible it is now or ever given that most of the top talent was never an option for Cain to hire in the first place), but if one Conservative is taken out by the media and the Establishment like this….they all will be…forever and ever.

I like my coffee hot and on the sweet side with milk.

I like my bacon crisp.

I like my eggs over easy.

I like baked potato or mashed instead of homefries.

I do -not- like Presidential candidates who cannot select personnel for competence. 

The essence of a leader is the ability to select people for competence.  You can’t do every job.  You have to delegate.  You cannot delegate to incompetents.  Identifying competence, or the lack, and dealing with that fact is the principle job of every executive at every level of every enterprise no matter how big or small.

Herman Cain has **failed** that basic test. 

More than failed it.  He has been shown repeatedly that his team is failing.  He has been shown repeatedly that they are not suitable for a national campaign.  He has been shown repeatedly that he needed to step up and adopt a different strategy in dealing with these very public personal issues.

Again Herman Cain has failed that basic test.

Stick a fork in him.  He is done.

Clever. A bit of a cheap shot (if this last revelation is fraudulent) but I have to admit, that was pretty good.

If Herman treats his friends like this he has no character. He has mistreated Stacy and I find that low rent. Maybe he will keep fighting and straighten things out or maybe he will bow out. Who can tell.

““How the f–k is he going to run the country if he can’t run a g–d–d campaign?”

Maybe that was a source. Or maybe that was me, shouting into my phone while standing in the electronics aisle at Wal-Mart.”

That was me a couple or three weeks ago.

His troubles have a lot to do with the media (or democrat smear job), but the campaign staff have been very frustrating to deal with from the beginning. Mark Block is a very clever guerilla marketer, but he is not a COO, and Cain should have recognized that. As staff have been added over the last few months, the only constant has been the change in who’s responsible from one week to the next for any given function, and the increase in layers between the public/volunteers and those responsible for events and schedules.

LOL    @ RSM Update.

JD Gordon seemed to start being pushed aside immediately after all the false stories broke and he did a terrible job on Geraldo.

However, he (or his Think Tank) seems to be a valuable resource on the foreign policy side (I like how they have laid out the policy on the website).

Seems like the Cain campaign might be stuck with JD, hopefully they can transition him out of the communications role and just maintain the military adviser role.

I saw a couple of reports that Cain had a fundraising surge with the recent accuser…not as strong as the last fundraising surge (understandable), but better fundraising than everybody besides Newt and Romney (of course Perry still has a ton of cash through his PAC…technically, he doesn’t need another dime).

Good job on the exclusive!

Herman Cain dissed Stacy McCain, and I find that unacceptable.  Sorry.  If he treats his friends like that, what sort of man does that make Herman? 

He may have to lease an office, with a couch, so to speak. 

Well, I hope he locks the freakin’ door, or he’s liable to come back from a “pastoral counseling” session to find Newt sitting on it with Pelosi.

What would Christine O’Donnell do?

ZING!

I saw a couple of reports that Cain had a fundraising surge with the recent accuser…

Yeah: $400,000 on Tuesday, so I’m told. As long as they can keep raising serious money, it would be foolish to quit.

As to J.D. Gordon: He must go. Period. He chased away Ellen Carmichael and the communications operation has been non-stop catastrophe ever since.

Even with the train wreck that has been the Cain campaign so far, he’s still sitting at double digits in the national polls.  A lot of Perry, Bachmann, Santorum and Huntsman fans would be ecstatic to have their candidate with Cain’s numbers.

1)Fantasizing about committing aggravated assault on the campaign spokesman 
2) Calling him a “useless son of [a] bitch”That’s Erhlingeresque.  When I was a rookie, my editor gave me a great bit of instruction: What people do to you is not newsworthy. You’re getting paid to get the news–not get frustrated.

I was on the Cain Train early, but the shambolic nature of the Herman Cain campaign saved me from wasting thousands of dollars in political contributions.

I live overseas, and unlike Barack Obama’s campaign, which would take campaign contributions from any fake name and address with a Pakistani credit card, the Cain campaign never managed to get its website able to accept donations from Americans overseas.

It doesn’t require firing Block. It requires recognizing the difference between master strategist, which he is, and chief operating officer, which I suspect he is not.
I have the highest admiration for Block’s campaign strategy.

No kidding. Leave Fargo out of this.