Herman Cain and Mitt Romney are essentially tied in today’s Des Moines Register Iowa poll, which is supposedly one of the more well-lubricated weathervanes measuring the fickle caucus-goer/pig farmer demographic. This is interesting because savvy Republican observers have been predicting that Cain’s supposed flip-flop on abortion would sour that group:
Mr. Laudner, the abortion opponent, said the overlapping statements raised alarms. “We’re talking about the well-trained ear of Iowa caucusgoers,” he said. “These people know when you’re pro-life at your core, and when you’re pro-choice, and when you’re trying to have it both ways.”
Herman’s recent clumsy work on abortion was the Republican establishment’s last, best hope, but it isn’t panning out. The difference between Romney’s chronic flip-flops and Herman’s abortion problem is that Herman is on record on abortion from way back, including this example from his campaign for the Republican US Senate primary in 2004:
Cain says his conservative credentials are impeccable. For example, he holds the position that, unless a mother’s life is threatened, all abortions should be illegal _ even if a woman became pregnant through rape or incest.
Cain is raising money and hiring staff:
For months, Cain’s operation in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina has been hustling, but the number of paid staffers has been limited. Now, having raised more than $5 million since the beginning of October, the campaign is stepping up, Block says, hiring experienced strategists, opening more offices, and organizing bus tours.
And the money keeps coming. The campaign has averaged $1.2 million per week since October 1, and over 80 percent of the $5 million raised has come in the form of online donations.
Herman is the perfectly lubed measuring instrument of Tea Party influence in the Republican Party, and he’s surging.
4tehlulz
Too late, Herman. If you did this months ago, you’d win, but you can’t create a ground game at the last minute.
Or is it second? Damn thing moves around so much no one can tell.
Observer
It’s obvious to most normal people that Cain either genuinely believes in most of his positions or he’s been playing a really long con since the early 90s.
Josie
As little as I respect the Republican party, I still find it hard to believe that they would choose this egotistical, incompetent ignoramus to represent them in a national election. It is the culmination of all their bullshit times ten. I am kept from enjoying it by the fact that it puts all of us at risk.
Punchy
If they ban abortions of pregnancies initiated via incest, I’m quite certain the population of Missouri will explode…
boss bitch
@Josie:
If I had only read this comment and not the post or title, I would never know which of the GOP candidates you are referring to.
dmsilev
@Josie:
The sad thing is that this could apply equally well to all of the not-Romneys that we’ve had over the last few months. Cain, Perry, Bachman, Trump. Have I missed any of the clowns? (not counting the ones like Santorum or Gingrich who never had their day in the sun as not-Romney)
arguingwithsignposts
OT, the latest front in the war on the freedom of assembly: Denver.
Via Naked Capita1ism, which has some gruesome photos.
WereBear
It’s another double down for the Republican party!
So many R “leaders” are warning about extreme positions messing them up in the general; and yet no one can rein in the monster they created.
Josie
@boss bitch:
@dmsilev:
This is true, but the fact is that he seems to have some staying power, while the others plummeted almost as soon as they soared.
JPL
Cain is libertarian except for some social issues. His latest statement on abortion before he flipped flopped appears to say the government shouldn’t be involved. Personally I think he is similar to Sarah. He has his positions but hasn’t taken the time to do research in order to debate his positions. If challenged, he says your wrong, shut up or you lie.
His foreign policy knowledge is on a par with G.W. Bush and we all know how that worked out.
The Republic of Stupidity
@WereBear:
Call for Dr Frankenstein…
Yer monster is holding on line 2…
Samara Morgan
@arguingwithsignposts: they dont want occupy denver to put up tents.
Mino
Bad Lip Reading on Cain. Posted without comment.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/1523
Samara Morgan
the conservative “moderates” want to nom Romney, the teabaggers (extreme right) want to nom Cain. hes just the last one standing, theres nothing special about him.
it doesnt matter which one gets the nom, because neither one can win the general because of anti-mormon sentiment and anti-black sentiment in the WHITE voter GOP base.
JPL
If you take off the mask on the current Republicans, you’ll find Evangelical Bombing Libertarians. Ron Paul only meets two of the criteria so he doesn’t count.
Jeff
The Cain’s fired a salvo of bullsh%t torpedoes at the USS Romney and the good ship’s takin’on water. It may make it into port, but it’ll hardly be seaworthy for the voyage to come.
Jeff
@Samara Morgan: I don’t want to “nom” either of them, they probably taste like lima beans.
Pope Bandar bin Turtle
Ewwww!
The Republic of Stupidity
***walks up to microphone and taps on it…***
Is this thing on? Testing… testing…
***feed back squeal…***
Hooookay… so it is…
***clears throat…***
I’d like to say something, if you don’t mind…
Yes… I would agree w/ the premise that Romney and Cain are ‘well-lubricated’…
But weathervanes? Not so much…
IMHO… more like greased up dild-…
***Hands reach out, grabbing TRoS, pulling him away from the mic and covering his mouth…***
***shouting now…***
Mffffffph… lemme go! Lemme go!
I get to say what I want too! It’s still a free country, innit?
They’re just a pair of god-damned dild-…
TRoS get dragged backstage behind the curtains… much ruckus… accompanied thumping and banging… then silence…
***House MC approaches mic…***
Sorry about that, folks…
Joseph Nobles
Three months ago I bet somebody $20 Cain would be the nominee, and I was about 75% kidding. But 25% of me saw a path for him, and by gum if he’s not walking down it. I’ll probably still lose – my only caveat was if Palin jumped into the race. But we’re only a David-Brooks-scrappy-iconoclast article away from me getting a crisp Andy Jackson on the matter. I’m going to have it framed.
Nevgu
Yawn,
Another mistermix masturbates to Herman Cain piece. You sure know how to pick your typing monkeys Wrong Again Cole.
AliceBlue
@Observer:
I wonder if there’s a little bit (or maybe a lot) of a Bradley effect going on.
WereBear
They could fuss over Cain until “things get serious” and then spin to Romney without spilling their glasses of Metamucil. (See! We aren’t racist you libtards!)
Being a Tea Partier means never having to say you’re sorry. Or, “I was wrong.” Or, “I did have my head up my ass!” Or, “I realize now that makes no sense.”
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@Nevgu: wow, that’s some insightful analysis you’ve got there.
scav
We should also consider that there is no way Congress can get approvals in the high single-digits without the lunatic-roots opposition. They’re pre-programmed with the anti-elite button in their kneecaps and the chip on their shoulder has until now been lovingly polished by handlers working on the populist insurgency line of attack. So there may be at least some anti-political elite voting going on, a bit of “we know you smooth back-room and media boys want X so watch this! neener-neener” action. Could also be internal in-party fighting about who’s really in control.
I’m also beginning to think about it all just being an ant mill. Better than lemmings off a cliff, especially as it really exists. Army Ants losing the way home and following each other in a pheromone-based endless circle until they exhaust themselves and die.
Samara Morgan
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water: its not insightful.
Cole was totally spoofed by Kain and de Bore. like many here.
it must be heartbreaking for him.
Kay and Tim F and DougJ and ABL and Dennis G and Rhandino are good frontpagers.
mixie is a glibertarian licker and AL is a JAFI.
R-Jud
@Mino: “All you could do is give that woodchuck a tuna melt.”
You know, I might vote for him if that were part of his platform.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@Samara Morgan: sorry I had a FYWP moment with my comment. People like nevgu come in and insert their little keyboard farts that show no attempt to explain why (in this case) mistermix is such a failure. They are just a waste of everyone’s time,
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water: That’s quite the ironic response there. Heh.
MattF
The WaPo is now claiming that Newt is ‘surging’. Would it be inappropriate to note that tomorrow is Halloween?
xian
Newt could pull a McCain ’08.
I’d love to see Obama vs. Newt. It would be the “old white guy represents the past vs. young black guy represents the future’ all over again.
I’d like to see Obama vs. Cain for many reasons.
Violet
@MattF:
Has he told Calista about that?
Quincy
I wandered through the comment threads of one of the winger blogs the other day and the comments I saw indicated that anti-elite sentiment is the driving factor. The paranoids are convinced the elites/liberal media are all pushing Romney on them as part of some massive conspiracy. They claim the same thing happened with McCain, and they are dead set against letting it happen again. They seem to consider right-wing organs like the Wall Street Journal and even Fox as part of the media conspiracy, so negative coverage from the Republican establishment isn’t going to change many minds. The conspiracy theories and determination not to give in are pretty similar to the things they were saying during the debt ceiling debate. In that way, the more the media and elite establishment tell them Cain is a preposterous candidate, the more they dig in in support of him (like Palin). Not that they seem as infatuated with Cain as they were (in many cases still are) with Palin, but they desperately need an antiromney and seem to agree Cain is the only one who hasn’t disqualified himself. After reading those comments, I could see Cain remaining a front runner through the early primaries. The real question is how large is the committed wingnut vote, and how many low-information Republican primary voters, especially in the bluer states, haven’t tuned in at all to this wingnut v. overlords turf war and will just show up and punch the button for Romney or Perry.
MattF
@Quincy: Interesting. I suppose that George Will coming out against Romney won’t matter– a little cognitive dissonance just makes things more exciting.
Davis X. Machina
After the mess the Huckabee Administration has made of things, I’d take the Iowa Caucuses very, very seriously.
Those rubes pick our presidents
Lolis
@Samara Morgan:
What is a JAFI?
Chris
@Quincy:
I haven’t dwelled on wingnut blogs for a while, but that sounds like exactly the shit that was getting peddled right after 2008 with regards to McCain and how he’d been at best a disgrace to conservatism and at worst a liberal plant who’d dragged down the awesomeness that was Palin.
To be honest, I think it’d do them some good if they got their own dream candidate and had him smacked down in an election (1964 all over again). But I’m not sure there’s any candidate out there whose defeat they would take as a personal defeat to them and their ideology – if that happened to Cain, they’d simply say “well this is why you can’t pick affirmative action presidents” and do a similar narrative on him to what they did to McCain. (Besides, if the economy’s bad enough, even a total psycho might have a good chance against Obama).
Chris
@Lolis:
Just Another Fucking Islamophobe. One of many pieces of obscure terminology she made up to stay interesting.
IM
@Davis X. Machina:
You know who else did win in Iowa?
But then you living under the H. Clinton administration never heard of him.
ericblair
@Quincy:
Excellent, the paranoia is starting to eat itself. Powerful media organizations carefully cultivate paranoid strain in America’s id, telling them to not listen to the elitist media. Then said powerful media organizations are caught off guard when America’s id starts to mistrust them too. Hoocoodanode.
Death Panel Truck
@Josie:
We can only hope, but we’ll never get that lucky.
piratedan
@MattF: well in fairness, they’ve probably been handling his tool the longest, so they would know….
Mike in NC
Cain’s bubble ought to be good for a couple more months, courtesy of the love he gets from the Beltway Villagers.
chopper
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water:
you should listen to derf, he made 3000 dollars last week.
debg
@Pope Bandar bin Turtle:
My thoughts exactly. Please don’t put the words “lube” and “Herman Cain” in the same sentence. That’s a mental picture I just don’t need!
ellenbrenna
I know some heavy Fox News watchers and they dig Cain. They have expressed anticipation and excitement. They think he is an accomplished and intelligent man unlike the losers on the other side. They like his super-conservative cred. Also Cain being a black man fills them with impish glee. Seriously, their eyes light up. They think liberals will be absolutely baffled on the one hand because they cannot criticize a black man and on the other hand liberals will reveal their true racist natures by assaulting a black man with non-stop criticism.
Also racism in the USA is only a problem when someone says something critical of Herman Cain (or Clarence Thomas, or Michael Steele). All other social problems, if they exist at all, are the fault of those suffering from them.
They will express these sentiments in the very same conversation/internet post. There is no argument you cannot win when you have no compunction about contradicting yourself.
Unless Cain implodes spectacularly in the next two weeks Thanksgiving is going to be a nightmare.
Nevgu
@Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water: If it is not already obvious to you why mistermix is such a waste of cyberspace it’s really not worth explaining. You’re not capable of understanding anyways.
Of course we both know you don’t want to understand anyways. But thanks for the cyberhug my little furry groupie.
Observer
@AliceBlue: I doubt that because Cain’s positions were 100% Tea Party before there was even a tea party.
So if you combine a good salesman, and Cain’s a pretty good one, with political positions that resonate exactly with their sensibilities plus a sense of genuine conviction then it’s going to be hard to do anything but love the guy. If you were one of them.
And he’s from the South and you know how that goes with the southerners. My only question is if this is going to turn into a Brokeback Mountain scenario where they know they should vote Romney but they just can’t quit Cain.
handsmile
On that Cain surge:
mistermix links to a National Review Online article whose sole sources are two of Cain’s senior advisers, one of whom, Mark Block, will be immortalized as the “smoking man” in the notorious/hilarious campaign video released by his boss this week.
There is NO other source for the claim that the “campaign is stepping up…hiring experienced strategists, opening more offices.” Nor is there any other source for the fundraising claims that “The campaign has averaged $1.2 million per week since October 1, and over 80 percent of the $5 million raised has come in the form of online donations.”
Maybe all this is true; I rather suspect it’s not. As with any claim by a grifter, it’s best not to take it at face value. I’ll wait for confirmation from a news organization more reputable than the far-right organ NRO.
Today’s Des Moines Register poll in which Cain has a one point advantage over Romney (23/22) has a margin of error of 4.9%. (It was conducted by telephone interviews of 400 likely GOP caucus-goers.) Thus, Cain’s “lead” is statistically irrelevant. The crackpot Ron Paul polled 12% support (or statistically perhaps almost 17%) for third place.
Do pity Little Ricky Santorum. Despite having visited 70 of Iowa’s 91 counties (between them Cain and Romney have visited less than one-tenth of that), he manages to curry favor with only 5% of likely Corn State caucusers.
MikeJ
@handsmile: Iowa polls months away from the actual caucuses? Not worth much.
Pollster.com has one from this time frame in ’08.
Clinton 23
Edwards 31
Obama 16
Richardson 18
Mike in NC
@handsmile:
Even among wingnuts, this creep is proof positive that “familiarity breeds contempt”.
ant
so are we liberals gonna cross over where we can and go pull the leaver for Herm?
I’d love to see him nominated myself.
(bring back the smelly toad!)
smith
At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Cain is the nominee. He’s been an utter fool, his tax plan is incoherent and has been ridiculed, he has flip-flopped almost as much as Romney yet he is in the lead and getting most of the buzz. He has been utter teflon so far.
The Republican rank-and-file I talk to absolutely HATE Romney with a white-hot passion. They think Cain is getting “picked on” and feel sympathy for him even though his positions are utter batshit and make zero sense.
Of course anything can happen and everything can change.
Hewer of Wood, Drawer of Water
@Nevgu: You actually took the time to type a response like that? That’s amazing
Bill Murray
@boss bitch:
It also applies to every Republican in National elections for the last 50 years
Hal
I really getting an Obama vs. Alan Keyes vibe in all of this again. Cain’s foolery will not carry him in the general election. What he does point out again, as Romney has really highlighted, is that the GOP voters don’t really like anyone in this contest. Being first essentially means getting more than 20% of the vote in these contests, but only barely.
Joey Maloney
@Mike in NC:
I think it’s more likely proof that being contemptible breeds contempt.
Nellcote
Cain is an experienced Kock propogandist. Money was never going to be a problem for him.
handsmile
@smith: (#51)
catclub
@IM: Yep. Of course the democrats in Iowa, who have elected one relatively moderate democrat, are not as insane as the Iowa GOP caucus voters.
Dean did what in Iowa? I suspect Jimmy Carter did ok there, too.
Davis X. Machina
@IM: I was not aware that Obama contested the Iowa GOP caucus. Of course, since he’s actually a Republican, that makes perfect sense.
lol
@catclub:
I’ve been getting a Dean campaign vibe from the Cain campaign, actually.
The Dean campaign ultimately proved to be too unorganized to effectively harness his grassroots supporters and backfired when he did. The orange hats his out of state vols wore in Iowa is pretty much the text book example of tone deafness to local politics.
Romney’s going to have a “surprising” (to anyone not paying attention to the ground) first place victory in Iowa, the air will be let out of the Cain balloon and he’ll have things wrapped up by Super Tuesday.
That’s my prediction.
mclaren
As I’ve repeatedly said, Mitt Romney remains a Mormon and this makes him untouchable as a candidate to the fanatical Christian fundamentalist dominionist evalngelicals who make up the base of the Republican party.
The Xian fundies would rather vote for the corpse of Josef Stalin than for Mitt Romney. They regard Mormonism as a satanic cult. So anyone who isn’t Romney will get the nomination. Even Herman Cain.