Category: Herman Cain

It’s Morning in Vanuatu Again

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Is Perry Toast?
— New York Times

PERRY DEBATE DISASTER: This Is The Moment
That Officially Killed His Campaign — For Good
— Business Insider

Ford. Quayle. Stockdale. Now, Poor Rick Perry
— The Atlantic

Cain escapes serious damage
in Republican debate
— Reuters

Kraushaar won’t do news conference
without other accusers
— CNN

Investigator: Herman Cain
innocent of sexual advances
— WGCL-TV, CBS Atlanta

82 Reasons to Visit Vanuatu
— Sydney Morning Herald

Mrs. Other McCain and I had a . . . discussion about the budget this morning. I’m sitting here looking at the receipt for the rental car I recently returned to Enterprise: $854.46.

Recall that I rented the car to attend the Oct. 29 “Turning the Tides” conference in Annapolis, expecting to return it afterwards. But then Politico broke the sexual harassment story on Oct. 30, which made Herman Cain’s Oct. 31 appearance at the National Press Club a major event I couldn’t miss, so I kept the car to go cover that. By Tuesday, when the Cain “scandal” reached crisis stage, I had to go to the American Spectator gala, after which it was only two days until the start of the Americans for Prosperity “Defending the American Dream” Summit, and switching to the weekly rate made sense. So then I went down to D.C. and found myself unexpectedly in the middle of the Occupy DC riot. By the time I finally returned the car, I’d had it for 11 days and . . . $854.46.

My transportation situation has been a cause of continuous stress, not to mention a disastrous financial drain, ever since that damned deer totalled the KIA last September. My 19-year-old son James has replaced the busted radiator, straightened the frame and gotten the basic body work done, but the car (on which we’re still making payments, of course) remains parked and awaiting the final repairs necessary to pass Maryland inspection, at which point we’ll have to pay to get the tags, insurance, etc.

James is now in his first semester of college, working when he’s not studying and, in whatever spare moments he has, wrapped up in the slender arms of his lovely brunette girlfriend, Danielle. Getting the KIA roadworthy again is therefore not likely to happen anytime soon, and I blame myself, if only because my sons inherited the legendary animal magnetism. Mea culpa.

However, there is a foreign policy debate Saturday in Spartanburg, S.C., and my friend Ali Akbar has arranged for me to get media credentials, so now I’m planning to rent another car tomorrow and drive down there: 475 miles one-way, a 950-mile round trip, 16 hours on the road and I hope, in consideration of this extraordinary effort, maybe my good friends with the Cain campaign will grant me something in the way of access to the candidate. Continue reading It’s Morning in Vanuatu Again →

The ‘Go-Away’ Money Game

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Washington, D.C., has a very rigorous “employment rights” regime, as opposed to, say, Floyd County, Georgia, where I had been working before I joined the staff of The Washington Times in 1997. And the sense of entitled grievance-mongering fostered by “employment rights” was profoundly harmful to the workplace environment.

Specific examples? Yeah, sure, I could cite specific examples, but why bother with any examples from my own experience, when we can talk about Karen Kraushaar?

Kraushaar’s former supervisor at the INS, who was named in Kraushaar’s complaint, characterized the 2003 complaint to ABC News as “frivolous,” and said Kraushaar may have been offered a few extra sick days as compensation.
The supervisor alleged that Kraushaar had a “poor work ethic.”

“Poor work ethic”? Why, you mean to tell me that the kind of people who habitually file workplace complaints aren’t the most industrious, cooperative, team-spirited employees? I’m shocked.

Ace slaps Kraushaar around for her complainin’ ways and says:

Apology time: This woman is not credible at all, plainly wants to be paid to not work, and yes, I should have been more skeptical of her.

So we have Kraushaar, who demands that her employer send her to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, because she didn’t think an e-mail was funny. And we have Sharon Bialek, who has a “history,” according to Bill Kurtis, and also seems to be a serious credit risk.

These two women are 50% of Herman Cain’s known accusers, and does anyone want to bet that the other two (still anonymous) accusers have something in their biographies that would suggest bad motives?

First, They Came for Mel Bradford

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Karen Kraushaar made this horse ‘very uncomfortable,’ according to
friends of the horse, who requested anonymity

“I love Cain’s story. He’s a guy who came from nowhere and did well, obviously against heavy odds. He’s a doer and a straight-talker, which I don’t see enough of from either party.”
— Clint Eastwood

“On his radio program Tuesday, Mark Levin aired a clip of veteran journalist and CBS anchor Bill Kurtis on WLS saying that Herman Cain’s accuser, Sharon Bialek, is a former CBS employee with a ‘track record.’ Given her checkered past, a chuckling Kurtis posited that Bialek‘s and Cain’s roles in the alleged car-incident could even have been reversed.”
— Tiffany Gabbay, The Blaze

“Yes, we should have standards and those standards should be higher than Democrats set for themselves. But those standards do not mean we have to join in every petty overwrought hyper-ventilated reaction from the left-blogosphere against one of our candidates.
“And for all the not-liberal bloggers out there who joined in, don’t worry, your candidate will get his in turn.”
— Professor William Jacobson (emphasis added)

Years ago, I began joking that I ought to write a book about the paleocon/neocon feud called, First, They Came for Mel Bradford, which title references the now often-forgotten 1981 battle over who would be chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the Reagan administration. Bradford was a brilliant intellectual who had made the career-damaging mistake of questioning the rightness of Abraham Lincoln’s policies, and lost the battle, so that the NEH chairmanship (and subsequent honors) went to Bill Bennett.

The point of such a history — one of those Books No One Will Ever Pay Me to Write — would not be to vindicate one side or the other, but rather to explain how such intra-coalition conflicts come about, examine the tactics by which the neocons succeeded in their various purges (e.g., against Pat Buchanan and Sam Fraicis, among others), and to point out how these “inside baseball” squabbles among intellectuals shaped the conservative movement and affected the Republican Party.

As Richard Weaver once observed, Ideas Have Consequences, and the ascendancy of the neocons among conservative intellectuals from the 1980s onward has had profound consequences. For the past five years, since the humiliation of the Bush administration in the Republicans’ 2006 mid-term wipeout, there has been a sort of reappraisal and realignment, with free marketeers and constitutionalists asserting their influence at the expense of the neocons. Advocates of limited government have been vindicated by the failure of “Compassionate Conservatism,” and those who support a serious effort to enforce our national borders now clearly hold the whip hand against the open-borders apologists. Continue reading First, They Came for Mel Bradford →

Did Herman Cain Harass Ace of Spades?

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Ace hasn’t made that accusation, but why else is he hating Herman Cain with the heat of a thousand suns?

I’ve made no bones — I think Cain is a godawful candidate, woefully uninformed, and, when confused, showing a tendency to offer up liberal, not conservative, guestimates as to the right answer. . . .
For some reason, some people are determined that this is the godawful candidate we have to go the mattresses for.
Why? We have ten other godawful candidates. What’s so special about this godawful candidate?

You can see the depths of the hate Ace has for Cain in that he’s doing the “second look at Gingrich” thing that all the Cain-haters have been doing ever since Cain zoomed to the top of the polls five weeks ago.

Ace deserves credit for being absolutely up-front about his Herman-hating, and having explained it in exhaustive detail, which is more than some other anti-Cain pundits have bothered to do. Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove, among others, are being gutless weasels about their anti-Cain attitudes.

So . . . second look at Gingrich? Not just no, but hell, no.

Newt won’t do, and everybody knows it deep in their hearts. The recent Newt boomlet won’t last, because there is a definite ceiling on Newt’s support, and that ceiling will prove lower than the 25% that Romney’s been stuck with for months.

There is something distinctly pathetic in the attempt to inflate the Newt boomlet into an actual boom, to pretend that we’ll see Gingrich on the stage in Tampa next August accepting the GOP presidential nomination. “Ain’t gonna happen,” to borrow a phrase from He Whom Ace Hateth.

What the Newt boomlet represents is the frantic desperation of those Anybody But Romney conservatives who jumped aboard the Rick Perry bandwagon in August, when it looked like the Smilin’ Texan Express was a one-way ticket to glory. After the Perry bandwagon ran into the ditch, and Cain zoomed skyward as the unexpected beneficiary of the Smilin’ Texan’s collapse, the Perrybots spent five weeks making elaborate arguments about Why Cain Can’t Win.

And they can’t back down from that contention, because backing down would compel them to admit they misjudged the political landscape, which would undermine their prestige as pundits, an irretrievable disaster for the Know-It-All Brigade.

Here we are now, Nov. 9. It has been 46 days since Cain won the Sept. 24 Florida Straw Poll, and it is 55 days until the Iowa caucuses. It has been 10 days since the first sexual harassment story ran in Politico on Oct. 30 and . . .

Cain is still winning — 25.2% in the RCP average to Romney’s 23.3%, with Gingrich at 12.2% and Perry at 10.2%. The most recent poll (Gallup/USA Today) shows a dead heat, Cain and Romney with 21% each. And as I said a couple of weeks ago, sooner or later victory becomes its own argument.

“Cain can’t win.” He’s winning.

“Cain can’t survive this scandal.” He’s still standing.

Bloodied but unbowed, this “godawful candidate, woefully uninformed” has one great advantage: He never read the Official Political Campaign Rule Book that explains why he’s supposed to lose, and why this scandal is supposed to destroy him.

Meanwhile, here’s your Karen Kraushaar headline round-up:

A Second Accuser Goes Public Against Cain
— New York Times

Karen Kraushaar calls
Herman Cain ‘a serial denier’
— CNN

Karen Kraushaar, second Cain accuser
wants ‘joint press conference’
— Reuters

Karen Kraushaar ‘had to leave
her job because of Herman Cain’
as new sex harass accuser comes forward
— NY Daily News

Karen Kraushaar now wants to go
public with other women with
allegations against Herman Cain
— Washington Post

Assuming that the parade of accusers is finite, assuming that we will not be disccusing Accuser #11 and Accuser #12 this time next week, Tuesday’s press conference may prove to be the turning point, the high-tide of the “scandal” tsunami which gradually begins to recede. If so, it will fade away in the rearview mirror after Thanksgiving and by Dec. 3 — with one month to go until the Iowa caucuses — the campaign narrative shifts. If Cain reaches early December still at or near the top of the polls, his survival will be the story: Here is the guy who stood up to the Politics of Personal Destruction and lived to tell the tale.

“If” is a very tricky word, of course. But I haven’t yet abandoned plans to become the Ambassador to Vanuatu. And if Ace of Spades says he was sexually harassed by Herman Cain — well, Ace was askin’ for it.

You know what they say: Once you go ewok, you never go back.

BTW, Herman Cain’s “Iowa Fund” money-bomb — with the goal of raising $999,000 in online contributions by Nov. 9 — hit its goal 26 hours ahead of schedule and has already exceeded $1 million.


HERMAN CAIN PRESS CONFERENCE UPDATE: Video, Headlines, Reaction

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UPDATE 6:05 p.m. ET: The Lonely Conservative has video:

UPDATE 6:51 p.m.: A quick sample of major media headlines:

Herman Cain: I’d take lie detector test
to rebut Sharon Bialek claims
— CBS News

Cain on dropping out of presidential
race: ‘Ain’t going to happen’
— Daily Caller

Cain denies harassment claims
— USA Today

Cain Says Alleged Groping
‘Simply Did Not Happen’
— Wall Street Journal

It is too early to analyze or evaluate the long-term impact. The immediate reaction toward Cain’s press conference has been generally positive. If he didn’t “hit a home run,” as they say, he at least got a solid stand-up double. And his vow that he will continue the campaign, without regard to his accusers or their accusations, is perhaps the most important thing he said during the press conference.


UPDATE 5:58 p.m. ET: Bob Belvedere at The Camp of the Saints is profoundly skeptical of Sharon Bialek. Allahpundit is poll-watching:

Finally, here’s the latest from Gallup showing some movement in Cain’s “positive intensity” score since the allegations first started flying.

What counts, really, is the results of the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, now just eight weeks away. All the polling in the world at this point is just a wild shot at a moving target. It’s been nine days since these accusations first surfaced, and we have many more news cycles to go through before we’ll know how the voters in Iowa view this.

UPDATE 5:40 p.m. ET: The press conference is over, and I think anyone who watched it will agree that it went well for Herman Cain. His lawyer’s opening statement might have helped put the press on notice to treat the candidate respectfully. The post-press conference panel discussion now on Fox News seems favorable toward Cain. I’ll be aggregating reaction and adding commentary in a moment.

UPDATE 5:27 p.m. ET: ABC News asks about former employee Karen Kraushaar, now a spokeswoman for the IRS, and Cain says her accusations were determined to be “baseless.”

UPDATE 5:23 p.m. ET: “In no way am I trying to minimize sexual harassment in the workplace. . . . It’s very serious.”

UPDATE 5:20 p.m. ET: The floor is opened to question, CBS reporter asks him if he would take a lie-detector test. He says yes.

UPDATE 5:16 p.m. ET: “We will get through this.” Makes frequent references to “the American people,” talks about his wife, Gloria.

UPDATE 5:14 p.m. ET: Any suggestion that he will withdraw from the campaign “ain’t gonna happen. . . . I will not be deterred.”

UPDATE 5:12 p.m. ET: Herman Cain says he wants to “take my message directly to the people. . . . I have never acted inappropriately with anyone, period.” He says, in essence, he doesn’t know Sharon Bialek from Adam’s housecat.

UPDATE 5:08 p.m. ET: We’re live! Cain’s lawyer talks about his own experience in representing victims of harassment and sexual assault. They didn’t act like Sharon Bialek, he says. Herman Cain is now being tried “in the court of public opinion.” Lawyer, he seems pretty pissed.

* * * PREVIOUSLY 4:49 p.m. ET * * *

Scheduled to begin in Phoenix at 3 p.m. local time, 5 p.m. ET. It will be liveblogged, summarized, aggregated, et cetera. A sample of headlines:

Cain accuser has history of
financial troubles, legal squabbles
— Chicago Tribune

Jobless & shameless gal going for gold
— NY Post

Cain Camp Questions Bialek’s Background
— National Review

GOP senator says Cain should
quit if allegations are true
— CNN

The GOP Senator? Lisa Murkowski. Yeah, right.

He Used to Be Somebody

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BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH …
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH …
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH …

It was a little less than two years ago that he “parted ways.” Can anyone remember the last time he wrote anything important? While I was writing this, Ali Akbar called to talk about his success with NotMittRomney.com. Ali is now vastly more influential than Mr. Ponytail Bikeshorts, which is kind of ironic.

Or maybe miraculous. Like I said: Pray real hard.

Addendum: “Mommy says everytime somebody hits my tip jar for $10, an angel gets his wings.” Are you calling Mommy a liar?

P.S.: I never called Cain’s accusers “rent seekers,” of course.

‘Unwanted Advances’

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On Fox News this morning, Martha MacCallum interviewed The Accuser, who characterized Herman Cain’s behavior toward her as “unwanted advances,” rather than “sexual harassment.”

Professor Jacobson has said that Cain is accused of “attempted adultery” and, without regard for whether we believe The Accuser or not, it is important to stipulate that we are talking about an accusation which has not been proved in any legal sense. Rather than discuss the specifics of Herman Cain’s situation, let us seize this teachable moment to consider “unwanted advances” as a phenomenon.

Any sexual “advance” a man makes toward anyone other than his wife is a moral wrong — a sin, to use an old-fashioned word that doesn’t get used often enough these days.

In common parlance, to “hit on” a woman is wrong, without regard to whether the hitter succeeds or fails in his sinful effort. We are judging by a corrupt standard if we think a man, whether single or married, has committed no wrong when his “advance” toward a woman can be summarized in the hockey announcer’s phrase: “He shoots — he scores!”

The corrupt standard which finds no wrong in that score-keeping attitude toward sexual sin is often termed “consenting adults,” a legalism dating back a half-century, particularly the controversies surrounding Britain’s Sexual Offences Act of 1967, which legalized homosexual acts historically condemned under common law.

Law influences culture, and vice-versa, and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s brought about a legal revolution that has in turn embedded itself in popular notions of right and wrong. Many people nowadays proclaim that we cannot pass moral judgment on sexual acts other than those that violate the law — except, of course, that the moral sense is intrinsic to human nature and people make judgments anyway, although folks in political life (including journalists) are generally careful not to express their moral sense in ways disapproved by the Arbiters of Acceptable Discourse.

The “consenting adults” standard having ensconced itself both in law and culture, the manner by which people obtain consent for sex (other than by standing in front of a minister and pledging “I do”) has become a cottage industry of sorts. There are many Web sites — including one that recently began advertising here — that specialize in arranging hook-ups. But I also consider the modern fitness industry an epiphenomenon of the Hook-Up Culture, as many people spend hours in the gym each week primarily to optimize their sexual attractiveness.

So, as The Accuser said on Fox News today, she wishes Herman Cain to admit that at times he has been “inappropriate with women.” The Accuser has described a particular incident and Cain has denied that any such incident occurred.

But what are we to make of that judgmental word “inappropriate”? We can all agree that if Cain did what The Accuser alleges he did, it was not merely inappropriate, but profoundly wrong and the Christians among us would say that such behavior would fall under the heading of sin.

That old-fashioned moral judgment, however, is very different than sayng that it is “inappropriate” for a married businessman to make an “unwanted advance” toward a woman seeking career assistance. And how does The Accuser describe her response to an unwanted advance?

“What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend. This isn’t what I came here for.” She was offended, we might say, by Cain’s (alleged) advance because he (allegedly) assumed that her interest in him was of a sexual nature. The Accuser wants it to be known that she had no such interest. What was “inappropriate,” in this view, was Cain’s (alleged) misreading of her intentions.

The Accuser is an attractive woman and we may assume that she has been the object of many “unwanted advances” over the years, all but one of which she considered unworthy of a Manhattan press conference.

A New York Times headline characterizes the accusation against Cain as “lewd behavior,” but such behavior goes on all the time — yea, verily, even in New York! — without meriting a headline in the Times.

Saturday evening in the lobby bar of the Rennaisance Hotel after the “OccupyDC” riot, several of us were having refreshments when the subject of “sexual harassment” was discussed in jocular manner. Was one of the females at our table making “unwanted advances” with her “inappropriate” jokes? No, it certainly never crossed that line, because none of the men at the table were offended, and sexual harassment is an accusation that requires an accuser. Headline in the Chicago Sun Times:

Witness: Cain accuser hugged him
during Tea Party meeting a month ago

Lord, we are all doomed, if eyewitness testimony about a hug during a meeting is sufficient to condemn us. At least Judas gave Jesus a kiss.


Herman Cain Will Hold Press Conference Today in Arizona to Address Charges

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Press release from the campaign:

Herman Cain to Conduct
Press Conference in Phoenix

In response to the allegations made [Monday] by Gloria Allred, Mr. Cain will conduct a press conference on Tuesday, November 8th at the Scottsdale Plaza in Phoenix, Arizona at 3:00 pm local time [5 p.m. ET].
It is noteworthy that Gloria Allred is a celebrity lawyer who specializes in generating publicity for herself and her clients.
Ms. Allred is a high-profile Democrat Party donor and activist who has given over ten thousand dollars to liberal Democrats like Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.
The questions the media should be asking are who’s paying for Gloria Allred’s fee, how did Ms. Bialek get introduced to Ms. Allred, and was she paid to come forward with these false accusations or was she promised employment?
After attacking Herman Cain through anonymous accusers for a week, his opponents have now convinced a woman with a long history of severe financial difficulties, including personal bankruptcy, to falsely accuse the Republican frontrunner of events occurring over a decade ago for which there is no record, nor even a complaint filed.
We will release more information as it becomes available.