Okay, I'm a Herman Cain supporter again.
I've always liked Cain. I always felt he was the only man in the race who was in it for America, and not for himself. I never lost that sense of him. What lost me was his pathetic show of ignorance when it came to a crucial matter; foreign policy.
I'm no expert on foreign policy either. I wouldn't have known what the "right of return" was either. But then, I'm also not running for president (and couldn't legally do so until a year from now anyway). I kept hoping, after Cain's poor performance in that area, that a candidate would emerge who was everything Cain was, as well as more prepared to lead America on the international scene.
Such a candidate has not emerged.
I've asked myself many times over the last few days since Herman Cain's stunning victory in the crucial Florida straw poll what's a larger concern; a president with a detailed resume full of national and international experience who will, without losing any sleep, consistently do what is best for his continued presidency at the expense of the American people, and fail to make any real change, or do we want a tough, smart man who really knows what's best for this country (ei. his 999 plan) who will NOT compromise with self-serving Democrats, who will NOT just roll over and take it when the media makes up lies about him, who will NOT pander to special interest groups and/or unions, and who WILL stand up for America, and average Americans?
Having taken into consideration who's running, and leaving out anyone conservatives seem to WISH would run (like Sarah Palin or Chris Christie), I have to say that Herman Cain is truly the only one I really want to see get the nomination. There are others running I would settle for, like Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman or Rick Santorum, but I would be settling. I wouldn't be happy with any of them.
Mock the idea of debates-as-American-Idol all you want; the fact is that if you can't perform well on that stage, you can't perform well as president. And Bachmann is performing very poorly. Rick Perry started off well, but I'm becoming more convinced than ever that Perry cannot win this unless he changes his position on immigration, and pronto. But instead he's doubling down on it. Mitt Romney? Are you kidding? I've said before, and I'll say again, that if Romney wins the nomination we may as well not even bother having an election at all, and just hand Obama another 4 years. Can Romney get conservatives to come out in droves to vote? Can he sway independants? In both cases I'm convinced the answer is no. A Romney campaign will be just like John McCain's; there were no votes FOR McCain in 2008. There were only votes AGAINST Obama. I know of no one who really wanted a President McCain. All we wanted was to ensure we wouldn't get a hard-left socialist in the White House.
And while I'm at it, let me say that I'm not really that fired up about a Palin presidential run, and don't want Christie to run at all. I love Sarah Palin. I love everything about her. But I'm not convinced she could run a solid campaign and actually defeat the ongoing smear campaign the left has running 24 hours against her. There are right-wingers the left hates, there are right-wingers they are afraid of and then there are those they hate AND are afraid of. Sarah Palin definitely fits into the third category, whereas I'm convinced even George W. Bush only fits into the first. The anti-Bush smears were awful, but the smears against Sarah Palin were and are the most reprehensible thing I've ever seen. They wanted you to think W. was stupid. They want you to think Palin is sub-human.
As for a Christie presidential campaign, there are exactly two things I like about Chris Christie, and two things only; he's willing to stand up to unions and he's willing to speak the truth as he sees it plainly and not pretty up his speech with PC bullshit. No one can accuse Christie of talking like a politician, and there's little doubt that his unwillingness to cater to unions has helped clean up New Jersey. Unfortunately in all other matters, Christie doesn't at all speak to the conservative base. He's spoken out in favor of the Ground Zero Mosque, he believes in anthropogenic global warming, he's for raising taxes and the debt ceiling, and I may be wrong but I also believe he's pro-choice. No, I do not want to see a President Christie, and every time he denies that he'll run, my first thought is "Good!"
Unlike Christie, Cain is a true conservative, and won't hide that fact. He also has the two factors I like about Christie in spades (no that's not a racial joke, and if you try to make one out of it, you're pathetic). Also unlike Palin, he seems able to rise above the smears. Not one smear against him has stuck, and a large part of that is that Cain (unlike Bush) actually--gasp!--RESPONDS to the smears against him but it's the way he responds that I like; he laughs at them. His stance for most is that the leftists who make the smears don't really believe those things themselves, but are afraid of his momentum and are trying laughable ways of bringing him down. And the Florida straw poll results show that he might in fact be right; both about his momentum and about how afraid he's making the Obama campaign.
Some are suggesting that running Cain against Obama in 2012 will take the race issue off the table. I say they're fools if they believe that because race will NEVER stop being a campaign issue for Democrats. They are convinced that they own the black vote, and will do all they can to hold on to it. They call white Republicans racist, but for Cain they'll bring out the "Uncle Tom" hat and try to make him wear it. Heck, they already are. I say to them: good luck. Cain doesn't wear the smears as well as Palin did. I'm not saying the Palin smears were or are true; most of them are provably false and those that aren't amount to little more than salacious gossip. But for some reason she had a really hard time fighting them off, and there are even conservatives who believe the smears against her (one website I saw claimed that her record as governor was littered with controversy, which is completely bogus; one of the reasons McCain picked her was she was a solid conservative with a remarkably sterling record).
Cain? I have yet to encounter even the most hardline leftist who can really say something against him other than vague "this man is a joke" rhetoric they lob against any conservative. Yes, there have been "Uncle Tom" smears. Yes, Jon Stewart tried to claim doesn't like to read (with a routine that would have been unquestionably racist to the left if it had been, say, Dennis Miller making the same sort of joke against Obama). But Cain seems to rise above it. None of it seems to affect his popularity, none of it has slowed his momentum even a hair. Now that he's won the Florida poll, maybe the media will start treating him like a serious candidate and we'll see some real effort on the part of the MSM to take him down. I say bring it on; I think Cain can take it and make them look ridiculous for trying.
Add that to the reasons I support him. While the Republican establishment continues to try and convince us that we should go for an "electable" candidate like Romney or Perry (or Christie) when we know they mean "someone who's not a real conservative because we stupidly believe people like that can't win", we the people have been waiting for a candidate who really speaks for us, who listens to the average American and who is not just concerned about getting elected and keeping his position, who has common sense solutions that will work. Cain is that man.
And to all of those who hem and haw and say "the presidency is not an entry-level position", I repeat what Cain says: "We've had career policitians in power for the past twenty years. How's that working out for you?"
PS: Besides, Cain may not have held elected office before, but he brings more real world experience with him than any president before him. Obama barely ever worked in the private sector; he lives in a different reality than most Americans. It's Obama that's the entry-level president, not Cain.
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