I know so many on the right are bending over backwards in defending Herman Cain from those sexual harassment allegations that won’t go away but lets just put that aside for a moment and look at Cain on foreign policy. Apparently Cain seems to have “Perryed” a very elemental question about the military campaign that just ended in Libya. Now we’re not talking about some obscure war from America’s past, we’re talking about an event that was on all of the newswires last month!

In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain stumbled when asked about the recent war he didn’t even know where Barack Obama stood on the issue: “Libya. President Obama supported the uprising, correct? President Obama called for the removal of Qadhafi. Just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing before I say, yes I agree, I know I didn’t agree. I do not agree with the way he handled it for the following reason — no, that’s a different one. I gotta go back to … Got all this stuff twirling around in my head. Specifically, what are you asking me, did I agree or not disagree with on what? … Here’s what I would have — I would have done a better job of determining who the opposition is and I’m sure that our intelligence people have some of that information. Based upon who made up that opposition — based upon who made up that opposition, might have caused me to make some different decisions about how we participated. Secondly, no, I did not agree with Qadhafi killing his citizens. Absolutely not. So something would have had to be — I would have supported many of the things they did in order to help stop that. It’s not a simple yes-no, because there are different pieces and I would have gone about assessing the situation differently, which might have caused us to end up in the same place. But where I think more could have been done was, what’s the nature of the opposition?”

You know things are going South when even the ultra-right organ “The Blaze” criticizes a Republican like Cain: “The Herman Cain campaign seems to be in crisis mode as Cain’ s wife has emerged from silence to support the candidate against infectious sexual harassment allegations to new polls showing a surge in support for Newt Gingrich, taking the short-lived role Cain had as the chief opponent to the GOP presidential primary frontrunner Mitt Romney. Cain has appeared to suffer another blow today, as the candidate has been heavily criticized in the media for an odd video interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that shows Cain stumbling while answering a question about President Obama’s handling of Libya…Cain also said that he supports collective bargaining for public employees and mistakenly said federal workers already have the right to bargain collectively. These comments come in the state where the battle between the Scott Walker-led GOP statehouse and public sector unions has played out as one of the biggest political story lines of the year.”

The rest of the media doesn’t seem to be in too charitable a mood either when it comes to Herman Cain:

“CBS News notes that Cain stumbled badly on the Libya question Monday despite avoiding major gaffes in Saturday’s foreign policy debate. That said, the network notes that Cain,who has no foreign policy experience, offered vague answers when pressed on foreign policy questions.”

“The Atlantic writes that Monday’s odd interview is latest in a string of foreign policy gaffes by the Georgia businessman from not knowing what Palestinian “right of return” was to saying that knowing who is the head of “small insignificant states around the world” is not critical to national security, to being unable to offer a full answer on whether an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador was an act of war.”

The highly respected Republican strategist Todd Harris said that with the sexual allegations hanging over Cain’s head along with his series of recent misstatements, that there is no clear path to winning the nomination for Cain and there, in fact, never was one in the first place.

While so many of Cain’s supporters had continued to point to the fact that the candidates poll numbers had held up in the face of all this controversy, that too has now started to change. For one thing the polling which Cain’s supporters had referenced predated the rash of scandals and the increased scrutiny that Cain would receive as his popularity rose. That seems to now be changing. Quoting Alexander Burns of Politico, “Among likely Republican voters surveyed Sunday, Nov. 6, Cain led the field with 40 percent. On Monday, he was third with 22 percent. By Wednesday, just 19 percent of those surveyed said they supported Cain for the nomination.” Likewise a yet another poll showed support for Herman Cain dropping even among Republicans: “A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows sharply higher negatives for Cain, with Republicans also souring on the surprise front-runner. Overall, 44 percent of Americans say they have unfavorable impressions of Cain, up from 27 percent in mid-October, before the first allegations against him. Nor has Cain been immune among fellow Republicans: negative ratings among Republicans have more than doubled over this time period, now reaching 36 percent. Cain hasn’t lost support in his base, but the large number previously undecided now seem to have shifted negative. Should Cain be the GOP nominee, he would have to make up ground lost over the past month. In the new poll, independents now tilt negative on Cain, and the candidate’s unfavorable number among Democrats has jumped to nearly six in 10.”

So there you have it, yet another Republican candidate who had a breathtaking rise only to see his fortunes change so rapidly that its almost unbelievable. I think that its safe to say that the air is coming out of the Cain campaign faster than even his harshest critics on the left could have imagined. Seems to me that Herman Cain is just the latest but not the last of the “anti-Romney” candidates that the far right has so desperately embraced on the road to 2012. Who’s up next, a recycled Newt Gingrich but how much shelf life does his comeback have? Not much for my money, not with the rap sheet that he has to defend against.

Steve Gulitti
11/14/11

Sources:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Herman Cain on Libya; http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/video/?bcpid=13960334001&bctid=1275195602001

Politics ‘Stuff Twirling’: Flustered Herman Cain Struggles to Answer Libya Question During Newspaper Interview; http://www.theblaze.com/stories/stuff-twirling-flustered-herman-cain-struggles-to-answer-libya-question-during-newspaper-interview/

Herman Cain’s poll numbers slide in POLITICO poll; http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68286.html#ixzz1djrJ4t5J

Republicans Sour on Herman Cain; http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/behind-the-numbers/post/republicans-sour-on-herman-cain/2011/11/01/gIQAZDDyLN_blog.html