I still am amused with Republican presidential candidate Hermain Cain. But that amusement is now tinged with a sense of annoyance. I’m annoyed that while I had dismissed Cain as a serious contender for the presidency after he admitted he didn’t know who the leader of “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan,” the rest of the Republican Party had not.
Now, at the beginning of this month I promised to cover the Occupy Wall Street movement, and I’d still like to, but I have to take a short break in order cover a serious source of vexation.
In one of our Watercooler discussions, I told fellow columnist Neil Weinberg that Cain reminded me of the character Uncle Ruckus from “The Boondocks” cartoon series. The comparison, in my mind, only added to the sense that Cain wasn’t a serious contender for the presidency, but in fact a character designed by the extreme right-wing David and Charles Koch, billionaire brothers.
Shamefully, Cain is now considered a frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination for the presidency, so obviously conservatives don’t find Cain was as cartoonish as I do. I was astounded by this, because the only reason Cain should have ever been lifted out of obscurity was to be the punch line for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
The presidency of the United States is the highest office in the land, and I only make this obvious statement because it has apparently been lost upon a lot of conservatives in this country. The president has many roles to play, as I’m sure you learned in American government; commander-in-chief, head of state and a setter of domestic policy. Cain doesn’t seem prepared for any of those roles.
Before I continue with my critique of Cain and my examination of what should have been politically fatal gaffes and misspeaks, I must mention that the sexual harassment charges against Cain have not entered my political analysis and won’t appear in this column.
In a column titled “9-9-9-Nonsense” that appeared on the Economic Policy Institute’s website, policy analyst Andrew Fieldhouse writes: “Presidential candidate Herman Cain has made quite a splash with his “999” plan, but the catchiness of the proposal’s branding belies a subtle attack on low- and middle-income working families (and a not-so-subtle windfall for financiers and businesses).”
Even if you disagree with this assessment, which most economists don’t and agree with Fieldhouse, you can’t assess the ‘economists’ who actually support Cain’s tax policy, why? Well, because Cain refuses to list the ‘economists’ who supposedly helped craft his 999 proposal. This has led a few people to jokingly suggest that Cain obtained the idea for his tax policy from “SimCity 4,” where all the tax rates start off at 9 percent.
If you ever listened to Cain speak you’d think he considered governance as easy as being Mayor Cain in “SimCity 4,” because apparently he doesn’t need to know anything — advisers and economists will tell him what he needs to know. The best part? He can’t tell you about those advisers other than the fact that they aren’t Muslim.
If you don’t remember, back in the inception of his campaign, Cain caused a little controversy when he said he wouldn’t induct a Muslim into his cabinet or select a Muslim to be a federal judge. Think about this, Cain has openly admitted he’s a bigot, and yet he’s still in the race, people still think he could lead a country with approximately 2.6 million citizens of the Muslim faith within its borders.
Lastly, in recent video Cain was asked by an interviewer what he thought about President Obama’s actions within the context of the U.S. intervention in Libya, Cain was obviously stumped and then started to blather his usual nonsense about how he’ll
assess the scenario when he really doesn’t have an answer.
Folks, Cain is Sarah Palin with black skin and a baritone voice. If you haven’t come to this conclusion already then simply watch them speak back-to-back, and listen to the sheer incompetence.
