The breath of fresh air candidate
President Obama's speeches, once viewed in certain circles as soaring swoon-a-thons of hope, now leave America feeling hopeless. For a bracing contrast to President Downer's chronic blaming, maligning, and dividing, listen to Herman Cain. He doesn't seek to set Americans against each other, and he's definitely not bitter:
At Friday’s Values Voter Summit, one of the lines in his speech that attracted wild applause came when he related how a reporter had asked him whether he was “angry” about America, given the historic injustices meted out to African-Americans.
“I said, ‘ Sir, you don’t get it,’” Cain told the crowd. “‘I have achieved all of my American dreams and then some because of the greatest nation, the United States of America.’”This is reiterated in his book. Jason Riley writes:
"One of the most important lessons Dad taught us was not to feel like victims. He never felt like a victim; he never talked like a victim," writes Mr. Cain of his youth in the Jim Crow South. "And both of our parents"—his mother worked as a maid and his father was a chauffeur—"taught us not to think that the government owed us something. They didn't teach us to be mad at this country." Is it any wonder that Mr. Cain wound up as a conservative Republican? You mean he was proud of his country even before Obama got elected? The progressive mind boggles at the heresy. More from Mr. Riley:
Black individuals who don't see themselves primarily as victims are a threat to the political left, which helps explain why MSNBC commentators have derided Mr. Cain as a token and why Jon Stewart has mocked him in tones that evoke Amos 'n' Andy or Stepin Fetchit. To secure political victories, Democrats need blacks to vote for them in unison. Independent thinking cannot be tolerated.
No one is hoping more than the White House that Mr. Cain fades away. If he doesn't, Mr. Obama's fear of Mr. Romney winning independent voters next year could turn into a fear of Mr. Cain peeling away black support. Black enthusiasm for the president remains high but has slipped in recent months, and a black alternative to Mr. Obama is not a scenario that Democrats would welcome.That would turn their world upside down.
Niall Stanage of The Hill agrees, and offers some theories on why Cain is so popular among conservatives. Two-thirds through the article, he comes up with this wild surmise -- maybe conservatives aren't racist after all!
But there are alternative explanations. One is that the connection between conservatism and racism has always been exaggerated — or entirely confected, in the view of some Republicans — by liberals. The case for the defense notes, among other things, that it was Lincoln, a Republican president, who freed the slaves; that southern ‘Dixiecrats’ were often outright racists; and that the first black senator of the modern era and the first two black secretaries of state were all Republicans (Edward Brooke, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, respectively).Er . . . thanks. I think. Another theory, along the lines of "When did you stop beating your wife?" posits that we aren't nearly as racist as we used to be:
Another explanation is that racial attitudes really have changed. Back in July, during Cain’s initial surge, John McWhorter, a frequent commentator on black issues, contrasted Cain, and the support he was receiving on the right, with Obama. He wrote on The Root website that, during the latter’s 2008 presidential candidacy, an argument had often been made that white America remained racist, and that it was only Obama’s biracial background, light skin-tone and ‘neutral’ speech patterns that rendered him electable.
“Herman Cain is definitely not one of the ‘good’ kind” of African-Americans, McWhorter wrote. “He’s darker, less educated and less courtly than Obama, and he couldn’t sound ‘not black’ at gunpoint. And yet he is currently a big hit among precisely the kind of white people who didn’t vote for Obama...It would seem that his being black doesn’t bother them much.”"Much"? How about not at all? And just for the record, who were the guys who were so impressed with Obama's cleanliness, light skin, and ability to speak without that undesirable "Negro dialect"? Hint: They weren't conservatives.
Back to Herman Cain. RS McCain, the candidate's #1 booster in the blogosphere, reminds us that the rumors of Herman Cain's demise have been greatly exaggerated, and that " people underestimate him at their peril."
Watch Cain's Value Voters speech here. In both style and content he blows Obama out of the water. How much fun would it be to watch Obama attempt to debate Cain?
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Michael Walsh on the Cain candidacy:
It’s still unlikely Cain will get the nomination. Romney’s had nothing to do except run for president since losing the GOP nod to John McCain four years ago, and has a formidable campaign machine in place. By contrast, Cain is a gifted amateur, taking advantage of his sudden national prominence to speak his piece and hope for the best -- perhaps a nod as Mitt’s veep.
Whatever happens, the other candidates could learn much from him. Romney’s bloodless technocracy and perfect hair set few hearts aflutter; with another recession looming and protesters in the streets, the country needs a leader, not a corporate manager. Too-clever-by-half, Mitt could help himself if he adopted Cain’s simple forcefulness.I hope Romney takes that advice and yet again tries to reshape himself into what he thinks the voters want. It would fail horribly.
Katrina Trinko wonders how long the amicable relationship between Cain and Romney will last:
But as the intensely negative back-and-forth between Romney and Perry in recent weeks has shown, Romney’s not afraid to attack when he feels threatened by another candidate. For Cain, the best sign that he’s a viable contender for the GOP nomination may not be a surge in the polls, but criticism from Romney.I think Romney should go for that, too. I can imagine an attack on someone as likable as Cain backfiring badly. Go for the jugular, Mitt!
One more: Cain thinks things are different this time around:
Asked about comments that no one lacking political experience could win the White House, including those made at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball site (“A Cain nomination would be an aberration of historic proportions: American political parties typically don’t nominate people without previous officeholding experience for president.”), Cain pushed back.
“Get ready for an aberration of historic proportions, and here’s why. I give dozens of speeches a week,” Cain said, noting that he had been to Iowa 24 times and that the idea he was ignoring Iowa was simply a “misperception.”
“When I give speeches to rallies, town hall meetings, whatever the audience, no matter how big or small, and I get to my lack of having held public office, I get a spontaneous applause. I’m saying this, the people who are criticizing me because I have not held public office, they are out of touch with the voters out there,” Cain argued.
“People are saying they like the fact that I have not held public office and they love my concrete, specific ideas about how we need to fix this economy and the other problems,” he said.
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