There are plenty of reasons not to take Herman Cain seriously as a presidential candidate. There is one, however, that is rarely mentioned. And it is more important than the ones the media are talking about.
The ones getting all the attention from the commentators are not without merit. The most recent reason it is said Cain may be unelectable is the sexual harassment charges from his time running the National Restaurant Association. His mishandling of the story, contradictory comments and failure to come clean make Bill Clinton's remarks about Ms. Lewinsky look like a case study in candor. Lacking any real defense, he and his supporters have gone on the offensive by charging the media and his critics with racism and conducting another high tech lynching. That worked for Clarence Thomas -- a man who makes little attempt to appear awake while in court and has not asked a question there in the last five years.
It is interesting that race is being used to attack those who think Cain should be honest about his past. Another reason not to take him seriously is that he will never get the nomination from the party of choice for racists. No, not all Republicans are racists, nor are all racists Republicans. But Lyndon Johnson was an optimist when he turned to Bill Moyers as he signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and said that Democrats had lost the south for a generation.
The hysteria on the right over immigration would not exist if the illegal immigrants were white. And the fact that building ten-foot fences on the border would only create a market for eleven-foot ladders shows Republicans like to ignore real solutions and love to play the race card. They have written off the Hispanic vote to pander to their racist base. So while they may find him entertaining, Cain is not going to be the nominee of Republicans.
Another reason not to take Cain seriously is his pandering to another core constituency of the Republicans: the rich. In the interest of appearing objective, the media often try to consider seriously ideas that range from the ridiculous to the absurd. Take Cain's plan to tax everything at nine percent. This is coupled with his desire to abolish two other taxes -- the capital gains tax and the inheritance tax -- paid almost exclusively by the wealthy. The result of his 9-9-9 plan would be a massive shift of the tax burden from the richest Americans to the poorest and the middle class.
Cain's assertion that his plan would be fair and neutral shows the degree of his dementia or his dishonesty. Only under the most wildly optimistic assumptions and by using supply-side, voodoo economics does his plan generate the same amount of revenue as the existing complicated tax structure.
One definition of a fair tax is one that someone else pays. For Cain, that someone is anyone not bringing home an upper six-figure income. His plan would result in a more perfect plutocracy and should dispel any doubts about the Republican Party being a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of Koch industries. If he were the candidate, however, the electorate would begin to start paying attention, do the math on and figure out they would bear the burden of his take on tax reform.
But there is another reason that should matter more than any of above. Yet it does not seem to enter much into the debate. Never before in this nation's entire history from the founding fathers to the current occupant of the White House has a man become president without having had been elected to some other office first or having had significant military or other government experience. Cain may have been able to build a better pizza and he did lobby to keep smoking in restaurants when he wasn't hitting on his staff at the NRA, but there is nothing in his resume that would lead to the conclusion that he is qualified to be president.
There are those, like the Tea Baggers and other political nihilists, who are so disgusted with the way Washington serves the rich and no one else, that they would welcome this. In their opinion, having no experience is the best experience for the next person to run our government. That is like saying that, because medical care has become so expensive, the best surgeon is one that did not go to medical school.
So let's all forget Herman Cain and let the Republicans resume their search for a candidate who is not a Mormon.
Cain, on the other hand, walked -- ran! -- from the Civil Rights movement. Never helped a day in his life. Money is his concern, his primary value. Republicans love that.
To Republicans, your money is what is important about you, not your humanity.
.
F&F
More Coffee...
R/ PRONESE
"In recent times many Mormons have begun to realize that it is possible to be a Democrat while rejecting isolated party views on certain moral issues. Recent prominent Mormon Democrats include Eni F.H. Faleomavaega (Delegate to U.S. Congress from American Samoa), Jim Matheson (Congressman from Utah), Harry Reid (US Senate Majority Leader from Nevada), and Tom Udall (Congressman from New Mexico). "
http://www.allaboutmormons.com/misconceptions_mormons_politics.php
How do you know he has never held a job in the private sector? Would working the night shift as janitor to help pay one's way through college qualify?
Well written article. Racism is festering in the wounds of the Republican party. They have sunk to fear mongering, hate and pandering to the rich. Hopefully, 20 years from now, most of them will shudder at the mere thought of their extreme positions they are currently taking, much like most sane people do when they think of how the McCarthy hearings, segregation and disco once gripped our nation.
We should engage those with ideas and dismiss those with little more than the echoes of rhetoric and politics from 2 years ago. It isn't hard to determine the validity and plausibility of options, plans and ideas. It's just that people have developed ADHD and ...SQUIRREL!
Plan on Romney getting the nomination. He is the one most willing to go along with the puppet masters that got Bush into the White House.
By contrast, when Obama was running for the Presidency in 2008, there were no billboards proclaiming, "I'm a member of the Church of Christ."