“As of today, with a lot of prayer and soul searching, I am suspending my presidential campaign,” Mr. Cain said. “Because of the continued distractions, the continued hurt caused on me and my family, not because we are not fighters. Not because I’m not a fighter.”
I’ll post Mark Halperin’s point-by-point analysis of this important event when it becomes available.
Update. Standard Newtcentric pap from Halperin. But also too, there’s this exciting news:
Update. Why does Halperin always refer to Rick Perry as “Texas Topper”?
chopper
this is good news for mccain!
handy
I know I’ll be breathlessly waiting for that.
chopper
sorry, this is good news for gary hart!
David Koch
Think what you’ll be missing.
You won’t have Herman Cain to kick around, anymore!
BGinCHI
“caused on me”
It’s the ungrammatical passive voice.
cathyx
Besides the obvious bad grammar, he still doesn’t get that he’s the one who caused the hurting.
khead
I thought he was a lover, not a fighter.
Cargo
Crap. I was really hoping he’d stay in.
Brandon
@David Koch: Thanks to the timing of the announcement, we unfortunately will have him around for kicking for the next few days. Since he is doing this on Saturday, it guarantees that it will be in the papers and talked about on all the shows on Sunday, which then leeds to a whole day of horserace analysis on Monday, followed by opinion/obituaries on Tuesday.
It looks like we are unfortunately stuck with kicking this clown around until Wednesday at the earliest.
@Cargo: I wish he had stayed in too and actually won the nomination. The parellels with Obama’s Senate campaign against Alan Keyes would have been too funny. And we would actually get to the see how the 27%er thesis played out on a national level.
Rick Massimo
I really hope Herman Cain doesn’t go down the memory hole.
A guy who had a 13-year extramarital affair and only broke it off early this year because he was running for president, wasn’t really running for president.
He had no intention of actually becoming president. He did this to sell books and audition for a show on Fox. I suspected that was the case before the affair revelation, but it’s patently obvious now. I bet he didn’t even think he’d still be running by now.
And I don’t want him to go down the memory hole because I want every single person who put him at the top of the GOP polls, and every Villager who said we shouldn’t sleep on this guy, to tell us how they feel now. And tell us how they got sucked in by a guy who had no intention of ever actually running for president.
David Koch
According to an Iowa tracking poll, when the White woman came out, Cain’s support fell from 12% to 4% in 4 days.
Halperin is in full panic mode as he put all his chips on Mittens and he’s collapsing.
Rick Massimo
P.S.: What does “suspending” a campaign actually mean? Has anyone ever un-suspended a campaign? Does it just mean anyone stupid enough to continue donating to him still can?
Jewish Steel
Time for Cain’s remaining 10% or whatever to line up for the Newtaid.
ETA, the timing couldn’t be worse for Team Romney as he flounders through a bad week or better for Newt as he is seen to be surging.
Maude
@Rick Massimo:
It has to do with the money. I can’t remember why.
There was no way he could stay in.
Brandon
@Rick Massimo: AFAIK that is exactly it. The official accounts/books stay open for resolving debts/invoices to vendors and he can still continue to collect donations through campaign accounts as well that he can then continue funnel to his own consulting firm and the purchase of his books.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Rick Massimo:
I can’t speak for the village, I am not a GOP primary voter, and I have never been polled on the subject, but Herman Cain’s legacy is simple.
He would have had my every waking hour dedicated to Herman Cain 2016 if he had closed with Peter Cetera’s Glory of Love.
chopper
this is good news for edwards!
paychobroad
He speaks and writes like English is his second language.
BGinCHI
Countdown till Newt explains Cain’s rise and fall with reference to his upbringing in a house where “no one knew what work was, or how to keep their hands off white women.”
MikeJ
Obviously coördinated by the DHS.
dogwood
@Rick Massimo:
I don’t know if Cain was seriously running or not, but carrying on extramarital affairs doesn’t play into whether guys like this are serious. John Edwards, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani – all serial philanderers and all serious about the presidency.
metricpenny
@David Koch:
White women – the black man’s kryptonite.
(Dean) Cain should have kept it in lead boxers.
kd bart
Nixon’s the One.
MikeJ
@David Koch:
Should’ve realised that you
Should’ve told the truth
Should’ve realised
You know what I’ll do
DougJ
@metricpenny:
Dean Cain is a Perry supporter. Hard to believe that a part-Asian Princeton grad would support Rick Perry but there it is.
David Koch
@metricpenny: that Obama is amazing. As good looking and charismatic as he is, he had the strength and vision to stay outta the various dripping honey traps.
DougJ
@MikeJ:
Glad someone got the Pistols reference.
Villago Delenda Est
OK, so now that the campaign has been suspended, will he call up Letterman and beg out of an appearance, telling him he has to fly to Atlanta RIGHT NOW because his marriage is “cratering”, but winds up being interviewed by Scott Pelle on the CBS evening news instead? Or will he be offering a job to Katie Couric?
Schadenfreude obsessed minds want to know!
RossInDetroit
@dogwood:
Leads into a question I want to ask. Of course philandering is wrong. And for someone in the public eye, it’s stupid as well.
But was Cain’s behavior really that far out there? Sure, we make it look awful, but I know people who are far worse and get away with it. Do we really need to break ground for a fresh circle of Hell for him or is this kind of executive hanky panky within norms?
Comrade Javamanphil
@David Koch:
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer
guydick.Omnes Omnibus
It’s been a while since we had a Pistols title.
Richard
Cain, Cain, Cain,
Cain of fools
gelfling545
I think you’re right and that, if this hadn’t surfaced, he’d have been looking for another way out. I suspect that he fact that he came this close to really having to run for president was giving him nightmares however much he may have enjoyed the attention & the money.
Seebach
So… who will the GOP candidate actually be? Could it really end up being Gingrich? That’s quite a thing.
David Koch
I’m really surprised Cain didn’t break out into song, today.
Marc
Q. Why does Halperin refer to Perry as the “Texas Topper?”
A. Because Halperin is the “Bottom of the Page.”
ant
@Seebach:
I am actually wondering if the other Mormon might get a surge late in the game.
I think there will be a lot of cross over voters that voted for Obama last time voting in Republican primaries. And that the %27ers might not have as much influence as everyone assumes.
Brandon
@DougJ: Doesn’t seem that far fetched to me. I knew a guy whose parents were Chinese immigrants and he drove a Scout, dipped tobacco and wore Wranglers. This was in Seattle mind you, not even Puyallup or Marysville or something like that. Totally believable to me and Princeton is exactly the kind of conservative campus where I’d expect to find a lot of college Republicans. And Perry is really the Republican candidate that has an actual record of conservative governing (without monumental disaster) to run on. So for a Republican with a brain, he would be basically the best of the worst. Except that he has shown himself to be an inept moron on the campaign trail.
Anoniminous
The big beneficiary will be Gingrich. Most of the Cain
dumbfukssupporters switch:“…. according to the YouGov poll, Cain’s departure would increase Gingrich’s support by 7 percentage points, but increase Romney’s by only 2.”
[source: HuffPo]
Anybody who hasn’t been hiding under a rock for the last 20 years knows Gingrich treats his wives like Kleenex: good for having around in case of need, disposable when they no longer meet your need. So that, and his other failings as a human being, are already out there and have been discounted by his supporters.
Whether Gingrich can keep his foot out of his mouth and head out of his ass over the next five months is an open question. Whether the typical TeaBagging, fundie, GOP Conservative primary voting dip-shit will care if foot or head is inserted in the appropriate receptacle is also an open question.
At this point in the process, Gingrich has to be taken as a serious¹ candidate for the nomination.
————————————————————-
¹ Can’t believe I’m using the word “serious” and “Gingrich” in the same sentence in 2011!
Seebach
@ant: Huntsman is actually quite reasonable, though, is he not? Won’t he have to deal with a hostile Republican congress if he’d not batshit enough?
I really haven’t done any homework on Huntsman because I always thought he had no chance due to basic sanity.
Mike in NC
@Seebach:
Doktor Krauthammer has decided its going to be Newt vs. Mitt, and that has got him practically crying in his milk with frustration.
Mnemosyne
So when do we start the dead pool for when the first of Gingrich’s current girlfriends step forward? You don’t keep two separate accounts at Tiffany’s if you’re not getting something on the side.
Napoleon
@42
Seriously, he had 2 accounts there?
RossInDetroit
@Seebach:
I could forgive an old-school Republican (I’m looking at you, dad) for voting for Huntsman because he’s the most reasonable of the bunch. However in the crazified current climate he hasn’t got a ghost of a chance.
RossInDetroit
@Mnemosyne:
Not necessarily. I worked in a high end jewelry store. Different account had separate terms, periods and interest rates.
But yeah, I don’t trust Newt to have kept his, ahem, nose clean since wife #3.
Comrade Mary
Can someone please stomp, kill, fold and mutilate the “Huntsman is reasonable” meme? Please? No one who supports the Paul Ryan plan 100% is, by any stretch of the imagination, “moderate”.
Not-batshit-crazy is a pretty fucking low bar. Not-batshit-crazy and potentially the next target of media fellatio means the prospect of a “reasonable” Republican being elected next year. And you will all be fucked.
Seebach
@Comrade Mary: Alright, thanks. I didn’t know. Huntsman is not reasonable, but just not certifiable?
Comrade Mary
Yeah. And unreasonable but not certifiable is dangerous.
BGinCHI
@Seebach: Certifiably unreasonable.
Seebach
So, then questions:
1. Who would be the best candidate for the GOP to have of Huntsman, Romney, or Gingrich?
2. Obama loses. Should the Republican president be Romney, Huntsman, or Gingrich?
RossInDetroit
@Comrade Mary:
Covers all Republicans by definition. There are less lethal rattle snakes but it would be a big mistake to cuddle up to any of them.
Yutsano
@Comrade Mary:
But enough about Stephen Harper…
Villago Delenda Est
@Marc:
LOL
Your answer to the musical question is the fifth link listed on the Google search for “Texas Topper”.
rikyrah
can’t wait to see the Combover doing the debate tonight…should be hilarious
piratedan
well at least Happenin’ Hermie avoided double secret probation… so he’s got that going for him.
Bubblegum Tate
@chopper:
Feel the Santormentum!
Tom Q
@RossInDetroit: Huntsman, as we all realize, is actually quite conservative. But, showing how far off the cliff the GOP has moved, he passes for left field among the current contenders.
I could see him making a bit of a move if Romney starts to crumble. Remember how, in 1980, once it became obvious Bush didn’t really have the stuff to overcome Reagan, John Anderson experienced a boomlet in the GOP primaries. It was obvious he didn’t have a prayer of getting the nomination — he was an ACTUAL moderate — but he inherited some of the Bush voters who wanted to stop Reagan and hoped against hope this guy could do it. I could envision Huntsman taking up a similarly hopeless charge.
But I really think Gingrich is going to be the guy, now.
boss bitch
HUNTSMAN IS NOT REASONABLE!! JUST KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY. HE SUPPORTS THE RYAN PLAN WHICH IS ABSOLUTE BATSHIT CRAZINESS.
Remember how Liberals were losing their shit because they were dumb enough to think that Obama was going to support the Ryan Plan? Huntsman supports the plan so why is he being seen as “reasonable”?
RossInDetroit
@Tom Q:
I think so too, but this assumes millions of people who really don’t like or trust him holding their noses. He could win the nom without really enough support to make a dent against Obama.
Just as importantly, there’s the ‘neither’ option. Plenty of Republicans will be so turned off by the prospect of either Newt or Mitt that they’ll sit out the general. There really isn’t a candidate who motivates enough people to pull a strong turnout. I think that’s going to be a big factor in the Dems’ favor all down the ticket.
sukabi
Why does Halperin always refer to Rick Perry as “Texas Topper”?
I’m guessing it’s an inside joke… he knows Perry’s not a ‘bottom’…
General Stuck
Don’t know. But have you heard the one about two Mormons and the pasty gigolo?
RossInDetroit
@boss bitch:
That point has been made and acknowledged without the caps.
We get it.
Marc
Villago:
Can you link to the search?
Anoniminous
@RossInDetroit:
Classically, being or perceived to be in the Center is the winning slot in Presidential elections. Obama is a Centerist so the GOP propaganda mill is busily trying to create the perception he is a Lefty. Which is cute since his low-ish polling numbers stem from the fact he is a Centerist and not getting Left Wing polling support.
Being the tallest candidate is also highly correlated with winning. Positions and policies have only a minor affect, which goes to show how fucking superficially stupid the average American voter is.
Canuckistani Tom
@Yutsano:
LOL
on that note, does any of our political garbage ever make the news south of the border?
Omnes Omnibus
@boss bitch: Look, if I call someone a small defensive lineman, I don’t mean he is 5’4″, 140 lbs. I mean he is 6’2″ and under 300 lbs. If someone uses the term reasonable in the context of GOP presidential candidates, they generally mean that person believes the earth revolves around the sun and doesn’t take all of his/her views from the bible as translated by Ayn Rand. Context is important.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@RossInDetroit: you gotta wonder if Ron Paul is dotty enough to make an Indy run. Hasn’t he announced that he’s done in Congress?
For years I’ve thought Mark Halperin was Time magazine’s designated right-leaning pundit. I’m told he’s supposed to be neutral. Is “permanent vacation” the new “teleprompter”?
Comrade Mary
@Yutsano: Too much. Toooo much.
But hey, kids, here’s an example of a “reasonable” conservative getting a majority and the power to push through an expensive, destructive and totally wrong-headed crime bill, because even though stats say crime is down and polls show the public isn’t asking for this, the Tories want what they want.
Hell, even Texas thinks we’re crazy for repeating their mistakes.
Schlemizel
@RossInDetroit:
From your lips to His noodley appendage – desperation make crazy people do strange things.
RossInDetroit
@Anoniminous:
With the GOP spending 4 years running down Obama for being an elitist egghead, it will be interesting to see how they package Professor Historian Idea Man Newt if he’s the pick. He certainly doesn’t have Perry’s folksy appeal.
Yutsano
@Canuckistani Tom: That was actually rather mean of me I admit.
I tend to read CBC and CTV because I dated a Canadian for quite some time. The whole relationship is a bit of a saga mostly because it’s potentially unfinished. Otherwise most Americans hardly even know there IS a Canada.
Sly
@Anoniminous:
Not in the slightest.
The man’s entire campaign strategy has been, since the beginning, to dazzle everyone with the fact that he’s an obvious Great Man of History and Intellectual Juggernaut who will ascend to the Presidency like Jesus ascended to the Right Hand of the Lord. In other words: No ground game. At all. Then he goes on a sailing trip around the Greek Isles with ex-Mistress #2 and, after his campaign staff bolts on him, puts out the greatest press release in the history of the human race (so long as your sole criterion for judgement is freakish self-aggrandizement).
Gingrich’s egomania made him run instead of staying safe on the wingnut gravy train, slurping up speaking fees from the corporate set, and Gingrich’s egomania will cause him to lose. He’s Sarah Palin with twice the vanity and half the intellect. At least she knows how to exploit a meal ticket when she’s latched on to one.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Of course, there is a Canada. It’s where we get the majority of hockey players that aren’t Chris Chelios from. Well, Canada and something called Europe, but I think people are making up the last one.
Schlemizel
@boss bitch:
Its not that Huntsman man IS sane, its that he APPEARS sane. This will allow the low information moron to vote for him as an alternative to the Kenyan So cial ist. It would be the equivalent of Boy George’s “compassionate conservative” shit from 99 and allow them to finish the destruction of America.
Roger Moore
@DougJ:
Hey, he’s part of the 1%. He knows which Party has the interests of the wealthy of any skin color at heart.
Brian R.
@Seebach:
Best, in terms of easiest for Obama to beat? Gingrich, then Romney, then Huntsman.
All the things that hurt Huntsman in the primaries — his relative sanity on issues like climate change, his role in the Obama administration, etc. — would be very appealing to centrist minded voters and their media enablers.
But Gingrich is an impetuous asshole who will certainly tell a voter to go fuck himself on the campaign, as his ostrich-lookalike wife stands by. And Romney is the Republican John Kerry.
Huntsman, for all his embrace of the Ryan plan, is an actual grownup. Romney would tack back to the center once elected, but … meh. Gingrich would preside over the dissolution of the Union, and then brag about it as one of his most brilliant ideas and innovative accomplishments as president.
Villago Delenda Est
@Marc:
I just clicked on DougJ’s update to this thread, and there it was. #5 with a bullet! :)
karen marie
@RossInDetroit: Also, too, he’s a Republican and their platform is batshit insane.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus:
Waitaminute…are you saying, if I drive north on I-5 for about two hours I’ll run into something? UNPOSSIBLE!!
(i can haz second home on Vancouver Island naow plz?)
Seebach
@Brian R.: So, basically, in theory, we want Gingrich to be candidate, but we need him to lose. Alternately, Huntsman would be the best president, but the biggest risk.
Yeah, figured as much.
RossInDetroit
@karen marie:
Okay, in case I’ve been misunderstood, Republican = bad. Least bad Republican: also bad.
Marc
Villago:
Is there any way to raise that result to #1? That would make my day.
Roger Moore
@Seebach:
I’ll hold my nose and say Huntsman. Any of them will sign whatever craziness the Republicans in Congress manage to pass, but I think Huntsman has a clue about foreign policy and may actually have some concept of ethics. Low bar, least of three evils, etc.
Canuckistani Tom
@Yutsano:
You’re telling me. I once met a woman in Ohio who’d never heard of Canada, and thought Toledo was on the Atlantic Ocean
Anoniminous
(When talking about Gingrich need some background music.)
@RossInDetroit:
Gingrich has an ego the size of the Grand Canyon so I bet he’ll run his own Image campaign. See @Sly:’s comment, which I think nails Gingrich’s estimation of his own importance.
Sly, you’re right but I wonder if it will make any difference to GOP primary voters who have their own “issues” with Reality. I wouldn’t have hired GWB to run a lemonade stand in the Sahara Desert but he was given the GOP nod twice. Members of the GOP base that I personally know and have interacted with, so can examine, are not only illiterate and innumerate they lack Critical Thinking Skills; they are simply incapable of judging the relative worth of “information received.” If the “information” is a good fit for their pre-established prejudices they’ll tag along.
Maybe the GOP insiders and major players (read: 1% money) will force Romney down their base’s throat. And it has to be “force” because their base REALLY doesn’t like the guy; for one, the GOP has spent billions sliming and slanging Governors from Massachusetts and now they’re trying to get a former Governor from Massachusetts nominated! (Talk about an Own Goal … lol.) And it maybe the GOP’s loathing of a Negro in the White House will overcome their dislike of Willard and they will, at the end, rally around.
Gingrich, however, seems a better fit.
But darned if I can figure-out what is going on.
srv
Think of it this way, Cain has a lot more time to spend with Newt’s wives.
Sophia
@Brian R.:
Please let this be true.
General Stuck
All things being equal albeit thoroughly FUBAR with the GOP, in case Newt was the grudge holding sort, his nomination for GOP POTUS would present a golden, or at least silver or other precious minerals, opportunity for some payback aimed at the party who once gave him the boot, and a decade or so, of time in the wingnut wilderness. If he was the grudge nursing type.
The republican braintrust, such as it is with the former grand ole party, will not allow that to occur, if it smells anything like it will, or is occurring, and maybe even otherwise, which is why they slipped into the platform language in the convention rules to broker a viable candidate, if need be.
The current republican party is only viable for electoral purposes of a president, due to the white faithful, that a sizable portion of, would burn it all down, and just might, rather than vote for a democrat, or slide into a permanent minority status at the national level. The truly electable candidates know this, and that their party is quite insane, and wanted no part in the coming stampede of right wing zombie poltergeists, to be released on the country for 2012.
Don’t listen to the Fox spin, as they are simply holding things together with string and ceiling wax and tons of bullshit. Hoping one day to wake up in a shining city on a hill again. The American republican party is the most dangerous institution currently on planet earth. And no one is safe until a persistent majority of American voters drives a permanent stake into the belly of that beast.
We aren’t there yet, and won’t likely be after this cycle, But I do get the feeling, even the apathetic US voter has fired up their personal radar more than usual, for detection of nihilistic politicking from the right wing. Hope so, anyways.
eemom
@Brian R.:
Please stop saying this (not just you). It is ridiculously unfair to John Kerry, on many different counts.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: Hear, hear.
AxelFoley
@boss bitch:
Exactly. What the fuck is it with so-called Liberals and their fascination with “reasonable Republicans”? Ain’t no such creature.
Omnes Omnibus
@AxelFoley: Many liberals are concerned about endangered species, even if the animal is not particularly attractive.
RossInDetroit
@AxelFoley:
Well I called him ‘relatively reasonable’. In this context that means he doesn’t need to be chained to a rotary leash in his own back yard. And not much else.
Hal
This bitch. Can he ever take responsibility for anything?
Villago Delenda Est
@eemom:
For example, when John Kerry was being shot at in Vietnam, Mitt Romney was in France. Doing his Mormon missionary stint.
Villago Delenda Est
@Marc:
Dunno, I know nothing about gaming Google results.
eemom
wrt this “reasonable” thing, here’s the deal: I used to work with a fellow lawyer in a situation where we desperately needed good legal assistants and the ones we had were all hopelessly incompetent. There was one who fucked up maybe 1 time out of 10 instead of 1 time out of 1, and she was given the distinguished title of “Team Leader”. Whenever I exploded at my colleague over this he would only reiterate, placidly: “In the land of the blind the one-eyed are king.”
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@Comrade Mary: But the unreported crimes are way, way up
Mnemosyne
Also, when thinking of Huntsman as the best of a bad lot, keep in mind that he would only be rational if he had a Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid (with a non-filibusterable majority) sending him decent legislation. If the Clown Car of Fail is in charge of the House and Senate, expect the Ryan Plan to be the law of the land by February 2013, because ain’t no way President Huntsman doesn’t sign that.
eemom
@Villago Delenda Est:
precisement.
And Kerry actually HAS some of those……whaddaya call ’em…..”principles.”
He’s not a soul-dead, plastic Ken doll hollow of anything other than personal ambition.
As Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman he has in depth, sophisticated knowledge of, you know, foreign affairs.
In terms of intellect and substance, he handily mopped the floor with fucking W in the 2004 debates.
So…..WHAT is it they have in common again? That they’re both from Massachussetts and both obscenely rich and both (likely) failures at seeking the Presidency? Sheeyit, I guess that makes Mitt the republican Ted Kennedy, too.
Shari
Huntsman also wants to eliminate the capital gains tax.
amk
@Comrade Mary:
worth repeating. jus’ saying.
karen marie
@RossInDetroit: Yes, I think you got it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Herman Cain is my name and I was riding the gravy train.
‘Til those women came and caused me to suspend my campaign.
Early fall of ’11, we were humming, we thought we were in heaven.
By late November, my campaign fell.
And the women want me, to burn in Hell.
The night they drove old Hermie down,
and the bells were ringing.
The night they drove old Hermie down,
and the people were singing.
They went “Ha!… Ha! Ha!. Ha! Ha!. Ha!”
“Ha! Ha!.. Ha! Ha!.. Ha! Ha!. Ha! Ha!. Ha!”
;p
cleter
This helps Gingrich a little, but he still has a hard slog ahead of him. Romney has FORTY-FIVE times the cash on hand that Gingrich has.
karen marie
@eemom: Romney is not a Massachusetts native, he was born in Detroit, Michigan. He was merely governor of the Bay State, and only sought that office as a stepping stone to what he thought he deserved, the presidency.
Comrade Mary
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water:
Who says Canada doesn’t have a faith-based government?
JWL
The phrase “Good News For Buddy Roemer” is inspired.
Villago Delenda Est
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Oh, very good!
(sends virtual magnum of Champagne Odie Hugh’s way)
amk
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Well done.
Hurling Dervish
Romney is the Republican Kerry because they are both screechingly awkward. “John Kerry, reporting for duty” is the equivalent of Romney’s “Who Let the Dogs Out”.