Dave Weigel at Slate has a post on the latest CNN poll of likely GOP voters’ opinions of likely GOP candidates, which mostly announces the unimpeachable: Republicans are still hungering after a knight on a white horse to save them; “serious” candidates Pawlenty and Gingrich can’t break out of the single digits, even with all their recent free publicity; and Willard ‘Mitt’ Romney, emptiest shell in a cavalcade of emptiness, is everybody’s second choice… ergo, almost certainly the eventual nominee. This is good news for John McCain President Obama.
On the other hand, Herman Cain — joke novelty candidate, according to every impeccable Media Village Idiot — consistently polled a respectable 10-15%, with or without competition from this week’s Fantasy Contestants (Guiliani and, of course, Palin), coming in at the top of declared candidates among self-identified ‘Tea Party supporters’. Which raises a possibility to warm the cockles of my shriveled Democratic heart: When Willard accepts his battered tiara at the Tampa lap-dancing nationals Republican convention, he may be required to choose ‘The Hermanator'(tm) as his VP candidate. Short of the release of police-blotter records for the misdemeanor-rich environment around the convention center, this may be as much entertainment as we get from the GOP’s march over the cliff. Mr. Cain seems to share Biden’s affable, garrolous, gaffe-prone affect, but more importantly, he’ll be perceived by Romney and his handlers as their worst nightmare — a smart, articulate, successful businessman who actually did work his way up from near the bottom of America’s economic pyramid. Since Willard’s electoral weakness (apart from the fact that he’s a soulless sociopath) is that he’s Dubya without the substance-abuse problem… a multi-millionaire who skated through Harvard Business School on his connections and ‘networked’ a career as a figurehead for more ruthless business predators before launching his political march towards the Imperial Presidency to which he feels himself entitled… watching him embrace a man whom Romney’s spiritual leaders didn’t treat as fully human until the 1970s should be bracing fun for us Democrats!