Politics : Page 126 : The Other McCain

Nate Silver: ‘Hey, You Know, Maybe We Should Take Herman Cain Seriously’

Posted on May 27, 2011May 27, 2011Comments

The polling savant of the New York Times takes a look at the recent Gallup numbers and is intrigued:

I would not suggest that Mr. Cain is one of the leaders. But in a field where the three insider favorites to win the race — Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Jon Huntsman — collectively poll at just 25 percent, and where some Republicans seem to be pining for an outsider (perhaps even outside-the-box) choice, he’s the freshest face.

Silver produces this very interesting graphic, illustrating the relative intensity of Cain’s support:

Which is impressive, any way you look at it. And as Caroline May reports, Democrats are now paying attention:

While conservative commentators Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove might not see Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as viable, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is keeping an eye on the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO.
While the DNC has been barraging media and supporters with alerts criticizing Republican presidential hopefuls Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, and Mitt Romney’s media appearances, Cain has largely been out of the mix. Last week, the DNC sent out more than 25 alerts attacking the aforementioned GOP frontrunners, not one mentioned Cain.
[Thursday], however, the committee ramped up its focus on Cain, issuing a “Rapid Response” attack against his morning “Fox and Friends” appearance, during which Cain praised the Paul Ryan budget.

What does this mean? Da Tech Guy thinks media liberals are now promoting Cain as a surreptitious way to submarine Sarah Palin.

That theory may attribute too much foresight and subtlety to the JournoList crowd. My own theory — insofar as any theory is needed to justify the overdue attention Cain is now getting — would be that political reporters are bored with the ho-hum GOP primary field and are looking for something new and exciting to write about. However you explain it, Herman Cain’s campaign has definitely gathered momentum in the past three weeks, whereas Tim Pawlenty . . . eh, not so much.

Good-Bye, Global Population Control!

Posted on May 26, 2011May 26, 2011Comments

And it’s certainly about time!

Spurred on by a public vote in which pro-life advocates said cutting funding for the pro-abortion UNFPA agency was their top desire, Congressional Republicans have filed legislation to yank millions from the UN organization. . . .
The vote at the popular YouCut web site makes it so the public will be able to track the progress of the legislation as it moves through the legislative process.
Rep. Renee Ellmers, of North Carolina, will be introducing legislation soon.
“This is going to save American taxpayers $400 million dollars over a 10 year period and it’s just another part of what we’re doing here in Washington to cut wasteful spending that we see happening,” she said in a new video introducing the bill. “And I am very excited to be part of this program and each week we will have more cuts coming forward.”

Here’s video of Rep. Ellmers making the announcement:

Rep. Ellmers’ Facebook page is here.

Dave Weigel: ‘Hey, You Know Who’s Doing Pretty Good? Herman Cain.’

Posted on May 26, 2011May 26, 2011Comments

Our boy Dave takes a look at the Gallup numbers and notices that the Hermanator has zoomed up in the GOP 2012 pack without benefit of much previous national media exposure, and despite the generally dismissive attitudes of such pundits as Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer and Michael Barone. Here are the numbers:

Mitt Romney . . . . . . . . 17%
Sarah Palin . . . . . . . . . 15%
Ron Paul . . . . . . . . . . . 10%
Newt Gingrich . . . . . . . 9%
Herman Cain . . . . . . . . 8%
Tim Pawlenty . . . . . . . . 6%
Michele Bachmann . . . . 5%
Jon Huntsman . . . . . . . . 2%
Gary Johnson . . . . . . . . 2%
Rick Santorum . . . . . . . 2%

A couple of caveats about this poll: First, it’s nationwide, and there is no such thing as a nationwide primary. Secondly, they polled Republicans and “Republican-leaning independents,” whatever that means.

All caveats considered, however, this poll is the latest indication that pundits who have been dismissive of Herman Cain are making a serious mistake. If Tim Pawlenty is a “first-tier” candidate, you cannot now deny Cain is “first-tier,” too.

Dick Morris says Herman Cain “blew me away” at a Wisconsin Tea Party rally and, even though Morris doesn’t think Cain can win, he admits that he’s got “magic” and says he can’t be counted out.

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

ADDENDUM: Permit me to remind you exactly how early I foresaw the potential of Cain’s campaign. It was less than two weeks after the election last year and, at the end of a very long post on November 13, I included the clip of Herman Cain’s June speech at the SRLC in New Orleans. He ended that speech by making a plug for a possible “dark horse” campaign in 2012, and I wrote:

Say what you will about Mitt Romney, at least he’s got some meaningful private-sector experience. But if 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. It might not be the “pragmatic” thing to do, but I’m thinking a few “blogospheric demagogues” might be in a mood to really bust some balls for 2012.

Perhaps some analysts have overlooked the extent to which the Cain campaign is an anti-establishment ball-busting operation. There are a lot of grassroots conservatives who are sick and tired of having the GOP establishment and the elite pundits pick their candidates. If Cain could somehow win the nomination, he would owe the Republican establishment exactly nothing.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

Everybody’s Talking 2012

Posted on May 24, 2011May 24, 2011Comments

Instapundit had an uncharacteristically long post about the 2012 Republican presidential field, my favorite reaction being Professor Stephen Clark’s remark:

“Rove and Krauthammer amuse me with their response to Herman Cain. Since when has it become self-evident that a man with the professional accomplishments of Herman Cain is unfit to hold the office of President for not having spent the better part of his life as an elected politician and has, unforgivably, remained unknown to the likes of Rove and Krauthammer? Paging Professor Codevilla.”

Karl Rove is the Architect of . . . what, really? A campaign that squeaked past Al Gore by the barest of margins in 2000, and scored a slim majority against John Kerry in 2004. Looking back on it, Gore and Kerry weren’t the most formidable candidates the Democrats ever fielded, and yet Rove’s reputation as a strategic genius rests on his management of campaigns that just barely beat them.

Rove’s disparagement of Cain, then, is to be taken with a grain of salt. Charles Krauthammer once worked for Walter Mondale. ‘Nuff said.

Bill Kristol’s pining for the Great Rescuer is, I think, apt to be unrequited. He clearly wants either Chris Christie or Jeb Bush, and neither of them is likely to jump in this late.

Is Sarah Palin in or out? That’s the biggest question mark at this point. The next major televised GOP debate is in August, and I’d expect she’ll give a definite “yes” or “no” by then. But think about this: If Palin waits until August, she’d be spotting her opposition at least a 100-day lead on organizing campaigns in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and other early states. Practically, then, her apparent indecision points strongly toward a “no” for 2012.

A poll from New Hampshire seems to show Mitt Romney with a commanding advantage there, but 87% of Republicans there say they have no idea who they’ll vote for, so it’s really wide open.

Can America resist the frenzied hysteria of T-Paw fever? To ask the question is, I think, to answer it. And if Dave Weigel wants Republicans to nominate Pawlenty . . . ?

Eric Cantor wants Paul Ryan to run for president — and who doesn’t like Paul Ryan? I think he’s an obvious favorite for the vice-presidential nomination, regardless of who gets the presidential bid. For any sitting member of the House to run a presidential campaign is, however, a long row to hoe.

Finally, Monday on Sean Hannity’s show, Herman Cain admitted to blowing the “right of return” question on Sunday:

“[‘Fox News Sunday’ host Chris Wallace] caught me off-guard. I didn’t understand the right of return. That came out of left field, out of all the questions I anticipated him asking me, I didn’t even conceive of him asking me about the right of return. I now know what that is.”

Ace was impressed. It’s probably not enough to win over Krauthammer. But then again, Krauthammer isn’t an Iowa caucus voter.

And there’s a new Zogby poll.

UPDATE: Don Surber tells the story of how Karl Rove was unwisely willing to write off West Virginia in 2000.

Good News! ObamaCare Helping Insurance Companies Make Record Profit! (And Rick Ungar Rides Again)

Posted on May 23, 2011May 23, 2011Comments

Because stuffing profits into the pockets of Corporate America is what the progressive movement is all about, right?

When last we heard from Rick Ungar, the death of a Census worker in Kentucky prompted him to declare: “Send the Body to Glenn Beck.” Two months later it was revealed that Beck had nothing to do with it, and the supposed victim of a right-wing lynching had in fact committed suicide.

However, progressives (who apparently include the editors of Forbes magazine) are quite flexible in their standards of journalistic credibility, so that the otherwise discredited Ungar is permitted to inform us that ObamaCare is working just fine and dandy.

Ungar’s “reporting” is for the most part a rehash of a May 3 story — which Ungar doesn’t bother to link, much less credit — by Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News:

Hundreds of thousands of young adults are taking advantage of the health care law provision that allows people under 26 to remain on their parents’ health plans, some of the nation’s largest insurers are reporting. That pace appears to be faster than the government expected.
WellPoint, the nation’s largest publicly traded health insurer with 34 million customers, said the dependent provision was responsible for adding 280,000 new members. That was about one third its total enrollment growth in the first three months of 2011.
Other large insurers said they have added tens of thousands of young adults. Aetna, for example, added fewer than 100,000; Kaiser Permanente, about 90,000; Highmark Inc., about 72,000, and Health Care Service Corp., about 82,000.
The Health and Human Services Department has estimated that about 1.2 million young adults would sign up for coverage in 2011. The early numbers from insurers show it could be much higher . . .

Ungar’s plagiarism of a three-week old story is nevertheless treated as sufficiently newsworthy to merit its own Memeorandum thread, and no one seems to notice that the “good news” is not really so good at all.

These 20-somethings, whose coverage under their parent’s insurance plans is now mandated by federal law, obviously don’t have employment sufficiently lucrative to include health benefits of their own. Many of them are no doubt unemployed — as are nearly 17% of Americans under age 30 — and living back home with their parents, as do most recent college graduates, saddled with an average of more than $20,000 debt.

So ObamaCare has compelled insurance companies to subtract a few hundred thousand young people from the ranks of the uninsured, although it is impossible to say how much actual healthcare will be delivered as a result. This is exactly the problem with mandated coverage: Most young people are healthy and don’t need insurance, except for catastrophic coverage policies (i.e., with a $5,000 deductible) in case of a car wreck or something.

Never mind. Their parents are now paying to have their grown kids covered up until age 26. The insurers are no doubt happy to have the new clients, although the additional coverage doesn’t really solve any health-care problems — unless the profitability of insurance companies was a problem you were worried about.

Herman Cain Issues Clarification

Posted on May 23, 2011May 23, 2011Comments

Walking back his widely-criticized remarks on Fox News Sunday about the Palestinian “right of return”:

I have long been a vocal and unwavering supporter of our friend and ally, Israel.
All Israeli governments have rejected the “right” of large numbers of Arabs or Palestinians to return to what is now the state of Israel. Such an en masse return would unbalance Israel’s demographic makeup as the world’s sole Jewish state.
In this light, should the “right of return” “be negotiated,” as I said, “if that is a decision that Israel wants to make”? Certainly, and to reiterate, it’s Israel’s call. Israel has a long record of being more gracious to its enemies than its enemies are to it, and this would be yet another example of that. But is the “right of return” a moral imperative? Is it something Israel must grant? Is it something the United States ought to encourage?
The answer is no on every count.
Our policy on Palestinian affairs must be wholly a function of our policy on Israeli affairs. Israel is a friend. Israel is an ally. Israel shares common values with us. Israel shares common interests with us, especially in the eradication of terrorism and the need for bringing peace to the region. As President, I will never lose sight of these basic facts. Any aspirant to the Presidency must have the unshakable US-Israeli alliance at the core of his or her strategic vision in the Middle East.
As your President, I would.

Cain was asked a question he was not prepared to answer, and it looked bad. As a result, pundits who didn’t much care for Cain’s candidacy — including Jonah Goldberg and Michael Barone — are in told-you-so mode.

These things happen. Herman Cain is not a foreign-policy wonk and stumbled over a phrase with which he was unfamilar. The pundits were shocked, but I’m not sure how many grassroots GOP voters in Iowa reacted with the same horror.

Jimmie Bise Jr. at Sundries Shack has some valuable thoughts.

UPDATE: “Will Cain get the Palin treatment? You betcha!” Josh Painter says, adding: “The Hermanator desperately needs a Peter Schweizer.”

Actually, I’m sure Cain has foreign-policy advisers, but apparently the candidate had not studied the Palestinian issue in such depth as to recognize instantly the phrase “right of return” as something that friends of Israel are obligated to oppose. We can expect that (a) Cain will undergo intensive preparation to prevent such stumbles in the future, and (b) the video clip of his Fox News Sunday appearance will be replayed endlessly by his enemies. This is how the game is played.

Mitch Daniels Won’t Run in 2012; Cites ‘Overwhelming’ Herman Cain Momentum

Posted on May 22, 2011May 22, 2011Comments

OK, he didn’t actually say anything about Herman Cain:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told supporters in an email early Sunday that he will not run for president in 2012, a decision he said ultimately came down to his family’s reticence about a campaign.
The announcement by the former Office of Management and Budget director and favorite of much of the Republican establishment will again roil the unsettled GOP field — and likely intensify efforts to convince another major candidate to join the race, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Dear God, please not Jeb Bush! But you see the pattern: Barbour quit, Trump quit, Huckabee quit and now Daniels quits, while Herman Cain — the man who all the pundits say can’t win — just keeps going and going.

(Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Jazz Shaw and Ed Morrissey ponder the imponderables.

UPDATE II: Some commenters at Hot Air were not impressed with Cain’s performance on “Fox News Sunday”:

Chris Wallace: “What would president Cain offer the Palestinians to make peace?”
Herman Cain: “Nothing. Because I’m not convinced the Palestinians are really interested in peace. If the Palestinians comje to the table with Israel with a genuine offer that the two of them can sit down and negotiate, the United States would, in fact, facilitate that discussion. But if we look at history, it has been clear that the Palestinians have always wanted to push the Israelis, and push Israel, for more and more and more. I don’t agree with that, and I respect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or taking a stand and saying they cannot give that up.”

Criticize that however you wish, Cain’s strong pro-Israel position aligns very closely with the views of most Republican primary voters.

UPDATE III: A pity party for the GOP Establishment:

Mitch Daniels’s overnight decision against a presidential bid will immediately raise the volume on the low-hum grumbling among Republican insiders that they’re gearing up to face President Obama with the weakest primary field in recent memory.
The pressure on a handful of Republicans who’ve insisted they won’t consider running but would be potentially strong alternatives to Mitt Romney will now significantly intensify, but the ultimate beneficiaries of Daniels’s absence may be two candidates already on course to run: Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman.
At the moment, though, the Indiana governor’s exit illustrates the degree to which the GOP race is being shaped by who’s not running.
Consider the list of would-be candidates who’ve passed on a campaign in the last four months: Mike Pence, John Thune, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump and now Daniels.
Add Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan and Rick Perry – Republicans with star power who’ve said flatly they won’t run – and it translates into a GOP establishment deeply worried that the flawed options they’re left with won’t be any match for an incumbent president who seemingly won’t face a primary but is likely to shatter campaign fundraising records.

The discomfiture of “Republican insiders” is a very good thing. Can we get a show of hands of anybody who thinks “Republican insiders” (you know, the guys who backed Dede Scozzafava and Charlie Crist) have a clue as to how to win elections? Anybody?

Linked by Marfdrat and Scared Monkeys — thanks!

UPDATE IV: Just a Conservative Girl has video of Cain’s Saturday announcement rally, and Left Coast Rebel comments:

So on a 90 degree Saturday in Hotlanta, Herman Cain drew 10,000 – 15,000 supporters. I’d say that’s not bad for a “long shot” presidential candidate ? particularly considering the fact that the crowd came out to hear Cain officially announce what he had already officially announced that he would officially announce…
How big have your crowds been lately, Mitt?

Good question.