Herman Cain ascribed his recent drop in the polls to false sexual harassment allegations and voter confusion about his positions on abortion and foreign policy, saying Sunday that some of his remarks over the past month had been taken out of context. “Obviously false accusations and confusion about some of my positions has contributed to it,” Cain said on CNN’s “State of the Union” when asked by host Candy Crowley about his campaign’s flagging poll numbers.
“That was to be expected. In terms of the campaign itself, nothing has gone wrong in terms of our strategy of spending time in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida,” Cain added. “So in terms of the mechanics of the campaign, nothing’s gone wrong.”
Cain said criticism over his position on abortion and foreign policy matters was fueled largely by comments that were taken out of context, leading to voter confusion.
“Some people are heavily influenced by perception more so than reality,” Cain said. “The good news is most of my supporters have stayed on the Cain train, as we say.”
Speaking of the Cain Train, I just got off the phone with a lady in Northport, Alabama, who is organizing a convoy of Cain volunteers that will be heading to South Carolina in January.
“The media don’t have a clue,” she said, speaking of what the grassroots network of Cain supporters have been doing “under the radar.”
UPDATE: A Cain volunteer created this video and, if you’ll watch closely at the 32-second mark — showing Cain speaking at the Iowa State Fair in August — you might spot an objective journalist in a brown fedora and navy blazer sitting in the front row:
Unfair? Of course. But liberals have been playing that cheap game constantly the past four years, and have thus forfeited the right to complain about “fairness” in political arguments.
The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on November 21-22, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. . . .
Among likely GOP primary voters nationwide, Romney is just behind businessman Herman Cain with 23 percent support; Cain earns 26 percent of the vote and Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is in third with 14 percent support. Romney runs best in New Hampshire – where he picks up a commanding 41 percent of the vote — but falls short of Cain in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida.
A sudden Gingrich meltdown? Cain on top in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida? Wow. Just . . . wow.
UPDATE: False alarm, folks. This article includes two different sets of polling data. The head-to-head match-ups with Obama — the lead item in the NewsMax story — is from Nov. 21-22. The nationwide GOP primary voter information is from Nov. 3, before Gingrich’s recent surge.
It took me about 15 minutes to read the NewsMax story and compose a post. Then it took another 8 minutes to sign up for the Rasmussen 3-day trial, discover that the story had been misreported, and post the correction.
I shouldn’t have pulled the trigger so fast on the original post, but the numbers were so shocking — an apparent reversal of fortune — that it would have been major news, so I rushed to get it online.
Hot-headed, just like Sonny Corleone, eh? My apologies.
The Obama administration is “dangerously incompetent” in foreign policy, according to Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain said, who accused the president of “coddling dictators” in a fundraising appeal sent to supporters after Tuesday’s debate on CNN.
“I believe I was able to clearly explain my philosophy about America’s international affairs and how I believe the Obama Administration has been so dangerously incompetent with our overseas dealings,” the Atlanta businessman wrote in the e-mail (seefull text below). “Unlike President Obama, I believe America should treat our allies better than we do our enemies. That means we should embrace traditional allies like Great Britain instead of coddling dictators like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.”
Some analysts have dismissed Cain’s campaign since he recently slipped to third place in national polls. However, there is evidence the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO may have begun recovering from damage inflicted by allegations of sexual harassment in the 1990s and by his own gaffes. A CNN poll taken Nov. 18-20 shows Cain at 17 percent, up three points from a CNN poll taken a week earlier. And polls in Iowa — where the Jan. 3 caucuses are now less than six weeks away — continue to show Cain competitive in the Hawkeye State.
“I am a consistent conservative who can solve our nation’s problems,” Cain wrote to his supporters. “That is why I am running for President. That is why I can win.”
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** FULL TEXT OF CAIN CAMPAIGN E-MAIL **
Dear Patriots
I hope you were able to watch tonight’s Republican foreign policy debate. I believe I was able to clearly explain my philosophy about America’s international affairs and how I believe the Obama Administration has been so dangerously incompetent with our overseas dealings.
Unlike President Obama, I believe America should treat our allies better than we do our enemies. That means we should embrace traditional allies like Great Britain instead of coddling dictators like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Unlike President Obama, I believe America needs to stand up to Iran. We should build our missile shield in Eastern Europe to protect our interests from Iranian missiles.
And, unlike President Obama, I don’t believe in spreading America’s wealth all across the globe in the form of “foreign aid.” Our economy is in a shambles and our government is broke. We should only provide aid to foreign countries that are either our allies or who have suffered a great humanitarian disaster.
The differences between Barack Obama and me on nearly every issue are clear. We are politically polar opposites. It doesn’t matter if we are discussing foreign policy or the economic future of America. I am a consistent conservative who can solve our nation’s problems. That is why I am running for President. That is why I can win.
Ideas and commitment alone aren’t enough to win the Iowa caucuses, however.
I need you. Please make an urgent contribution to my campaign of $20, $30, $50, $100, $250 or more right away. The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are only weeks away and our opponents have so much money.
I need the funds the match them dollar for dollar in TV ads and grassroots organizing. I need the money to spread my message of economic opportunity and fiscal discipline. I need the resources to recruit more and more volunteers to publicize the job-building benefits of my revolutionary “9-9-9 Plan” to spur economic growth. 9-9-9 means jobs-jobs-jobs!
Please make a generous donation to my campaign right away.
Thank you in advance for your support and God Bless America!
For a printout and a quick glance, The Tea Party Budget scoops Congress in general and the Stupor Committee in particular. Sure, #OccupyResoluteDesk, as well.
To achieve these goals, our plan, among other things:
Repeals ObamaCare in toto.
Eliminates four Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.
Ends farm subsidies, student loans, and foreign aid to countries that don’t support us — luxuries we can no longer afford.
Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from government to individuals, through new SMART Accounts.
Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan.
Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of Congress, whenever the budget is in deficit.
This blog calls on all the GOP candidates to either (a) substantially adopt this plan or (b) offer substantive reasons why not. Note that (c) ignore it will be interpreted as an admission of “Yes, I’m a Ruling Class Tool”.
Sadly, I don’t expect any of the GOP candidates to locate the intestinal fortitude to do much with this. Which is why I’ll probably write in Sarah Palin in the primary.
Admittedly, Ron Paul has already offered ideas along some of these lines. Running with this could be Rick Santorum’s breakout chance, since Herman Cain is all about Cool #9.
As far as people already in office, the gutless surrender monkeysSenate managed to wet itself rather than pay attention. No sympathy here. If you’re an organization like the U.S. Senate, headed by Gollum Reid, and you’re the better part of a thousand days into blowing your job off, you look really, really stupid if you admit that some common-sense conservatives could do in 36 pages what your impotent organization couldn’t even get halfway to failure on for less than 2,000.
Cain’s campaign told the New Hampshire Union Leader it wanted no videotaping of his interview, scheduled for this morning, with New Hampshire Union Leader Publisher Joseph McQuaid, editorial page director Andrew Cline and this reporter.
C-SPAN videotaped and broadcast on its network and website our recent interviews with Romney, Perry and Santorum.
Was the Cain “no-video” demand related to the Milwaukee paper’s video, which the Cain campaign suggested was presented “out of context in some measure” (a charge the Journal-Sentinel’s editor strongly denied)? Or was it just a coincidence?
We may never know.
His national communications director did not return our call yesterday seeking a simple explanation of why they didn’t want C-SPAN in the room.
And as of late yesterday, it was very much up in the air whether the scheduled 60-minute interview was going to take place at all.
The only public event on Cain’s schedule today is a rally at the Radisson Hotel in Nashua.
After confusion arose over whether the interview had been cancelled, Cain’s campaign apparently scheduled another event at roughly the same time and said Cain could appear at the newspaper for only 20 minutes.
Publisher Joseph McQuaid rejected the suggestion, telling the campaign that if Cain could not appear for the full 60 minutes, then there would be no interview.
McQuaid said today that 20 minutes was not enough time for a “formal, sit-down interview” during which he and other newspaper staff “size up” the candidates.
About 45 minutes after Cain’s 10 a.m. appointment, Union Leader Senior Political Reporter John DiStaso received a brief telephone message from Cain New Hampshire spokesman Charlie Spano.
“I hope we can connect in the future,” Spano said. Spano did not return our additional call seeking further comment.
Back in August, Ellen Carmichael promised me a ride on the campaign bus in Iowa, but it never happened because they changed the schedule at the last minute and didn’t bother to tell me until it was too late.
During my visit to Iowa in August, I met and interviewed former Iowa Farm Bureau chief Dean Kleckner, who is featured in Herman Cain’s Iowa ad that began airing last week:
Unlike Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who have been running TV ads on local stations in Iowa, Cain’s 60-second ad began airing on cable — FOX News Channel to be exact.
“The new television ad is a result of the strong fundraising that has occurred over the last ten days,” Steve Grubbs, Cain’s Iowa chairman, told NBC News. “Our supporters are rallying to Herman Cain’s defense and that means we will be able to take our message directly to voters.”
The ad has three Iowa farmers and one former farmer discussing how EPA regulations are hurting their business amidst scenes of farmland and other Iowa landmarks.
“Over-regulation is killing the American farmer. I think Herman Cain is the answer,” retired farmer Dean Kleckner says in the ad.
Kleckner served 10 years as president of the Iowa Farm Bureau, 14 years as president of the American Farm Bureau, and on the U.S. Trade Advisory Committee under three presidents.
“Herman Cain reminds me of Ronald Reagan and I knew Ronald Reagan. It is time to put the United back into the United States of America,” Kleckner continues in the ad.
One of my beefs about the Cain campaign — and I’ve been complaining about this to friends for weeks — is that they have not yet produced a single 30-second TV ad. Lots of online videos, but no 30-second TV spots. Which was OK, when they didn’t have enough money to buy TV time, but we’re now just seven weeks away from the Iowa caucuses, they’ve collected millions of dollars in contributions since September, and isn’t it time they produce a standard 30-second ad?
UPDATE: By the way, the new-and-improved HermanCain.com site isn’t improved enough. For example, when I saw Cain in South Carolina, he told me he would be in Iowa today, but good luck trying to find today’s itinerary on the site. Instead, I have to get the news from Politico:
DUBUQUE, Iowa — Herman Cain is back in Iowa Tuesday for to kick off a week of early-state campaigning that will take him to New Hampshire and Florida. . . .
Cain’s in first place, with 20 percent, though Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are all just points behind according to the Bloomberg News numbers out Monday. A second survey, taken by Kellyanne Conway’s polling company, also shows Cain in first place in Iowa, with a one point lead over Gingrich.
Steve Grubbs, Cain’s Iowa chairman and a veteran of the Steve Forbes and Bob Dole campaigns, said Tuesday that Cain would speak with reporters after each of the two Iowa events . . .
I don’t want to link Politico for Herman Cain news, OK? But when I can’t get Herman Cain news in a timely manner from HermanCain.com, I don’t have any other choice. The last time I talked to J.D. Gordon, he told me he now has a communications team of four people. What the hell are those people doing, if they’re not writing press releases and posting them on the Web site?
Is there no one in the Cain organization who understands the importance of timeliness in the news business? And don’t they understand that campaign activity is, in fact, news? The campaign’s Web site therefore could and should be a conduit for breaking news, because who knows better what the campaign is doing than the campaign’s own staff? Instead the site is posting stuff way out of date, so that by the time it’s on HermanCain.com, it’s obsolete.
Three polls this week — from Bloomberg, the Polling Company and Insider Advantage — show Cain leading Iowa. As of 11 a.m. today, none of that good news for Cain was reported anywhere on HermanCain.com. Talk all you want about running a “non-traditional campaign,” but tolerating incompetence isn’t “non-traditional,” it’s just stupid. I can ignore gaffes, but I can’t ignore basic communications failure like this.
A candidate’s Web site should be the first and best source for news about campaign activity. Your supporters (to say nothing of neutral objective journalists like me) shouldn’t have to go Googling around to try to figure out where the candidate will be campaigning from day to day.
