UK: The Cain Train

PJ: First it was Sarah Palin who caught the attention of the Republican party, a woman who demonstrated a total lack of knowledge and intellectual curiosity about domestic and international affairs...but she could wink and had that 'she's just like me' thing going. Then it was Donald Trump who caught their attention. "The Donald" with his chest-thumping, tough guy rhetoric and right wing talking points who had no substantive plans. Trump was followed by Michelle Bachmann who had already made a name for herself as that bat-shit crazy woman but whose Christian credentials delighted the fringe. And now the GOP has fallen for the pizza man who is proud that he doesn't know anything about the workings of government; a man who is proud that he doesn't know anything about world affairs and can't name many of today's world leaders. But he can sing versions of Amazing Grace to deflect questions about his integrity, so what's not to love?

Meanwhile, Jon Huntsman, a true statesman and moderate conservative, sits in the shadows. The one republican contender that the left had feared has no chance with a party that has run further to the right than at anytime in US history (at least not since the John Birch Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society). The GOP has become the party of fierce partisan divide; a party that has shifted towards unthinkable religious and political extremism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_extremism).

The Economist

Herman Cain
Rolling on

BY THE standards of bimbo eruptions, the revelation that Herman Cain was accused of sexual harassment by two subordinates when he was head of the National Restaurant Association is not exactly a pyroclastic flow. For one thing, the accusers remain anonymous. There is no injured woman weeping convincingly before the television cameras. For another, the charges are relatively modest: that he made the pair feel "uncomfortable" with sexual jokes and the like. Mr Cain, unsurprisingly, has produced an eloquent and forceful denial, replete with phrases like “falsely accused” and “cleared of any wrong-doing”. Mainly, however, Mr Cain has been saved by the amazing grace of which he likes to sing, which has delivered his candidacy from slings and arrows of almost every kind.

It is not that the allegations against Mr Cain are clearly implausible. The NRA (forks, not guns) seems to have paid his accusers off—not proof of his guilt, certainly, but enough to suggest that there was some room for doubt. He often remarks that America needs a sense of humour, an admission, of sorts, that plenty of people find things he says distasteful. Just before he issued a stentorian denial of any misconduct at an event at the National Press Club today, he clasped the woman sitting next to him on the stage in an oddly familiar manner. At 65, he is of a generation with a rather more liberal understanding of permissible behaviour than pertains in most American offices these days.

But since no one is exactly sure how it is that the Cain train keeps moving forward, it is not clear what will derail it. All sorts of things that might have sunk a less blessed candidate—his near-total ignorance of foreign affairs, the flaws of his signature policy, the lack of campaign infrastructure, widespread scepticism in the media, indifference verging on disdain from the grandees in his party—have had little impact on Cain 2012. He is poised, charming, eloquent, has a catchy slogan, and is not Mitt Romney. For the moment, at least, the polls suggest that Republican primary voters are willing to put almost everything else aside.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/10/herman-cain-0