Raising (Herman) Cain

I only caught parts of yesterday’s debate in SC but Frank Luntz’s focus group caught the whole thing and they decided that Stacy McCain was right.

This result should not sur­prise any­one who has actu­ally met and talked to Her­man Cain. Cain is a per­son who is never been afraid to speak directly. One thing you often find with peo­ple who have sur­vived can­cer is they are less likely to be shaken by other things. There is noth­ing like fac­ing death to put things into actual perspective.

As I type this (6:19 a.m. EST) Mr. Cain has just appeared on Fox and Friends. The Key answer he gave was his state­ment that it serves no pur­pose to release the Bin Laden photos.

The clips from the debate were sig­nif­i­cant, the rea­son why he didn’t sup­port Rom­ney this time (Rom­ney Lost) was a great line.

Stephen Green liked Cain while drunk while Steve Foley enjoyed Cain while sober show­ing Her­man has crossover appeal.

Also on the Minor­ity Report (and Red­State) fmaid­ment names the win­ners and losers:

Tonight’s big winner?

Her­man Cain.

The loser(s)?

Gary John­son and every can­di­date who didn’t attend.

Why did Her­man Cain win? Because the “front-​runners” weren’t there. He got his mes­sage out. He made a good impres­sion (Fox’s focus group had sev­eral peo­ple say he made the most sense and that his busi­ness back­ground really showed through). While oth­ers stayed away, Cain showed peo­ple he was a seri­ous can­di­date. He proved he could hold his own with the estab­lished, pol­ished politicos.

Actu­ally Rom­ney is very smart to not show up, the last thing he needs is to be on stage next to Her­man Cain and have a direct con­tract with him with­out a Palin, Bach­mann and Newt to con­trast him­self with.

MSNBC’s only com­ment on yesterday’s debate was about Huck not being there, they totally ignored it, of course they did, how can you paint repub­li­cans as a bunch of racists when a Black Busi­ness­man is win­ning the debate and get­ting applause from the GOP? Can’t have that can we?

Cain’s win means that if I am cor­rect about Palin run­ning there will be at least three strong can­di­dates with high appeal to social con­ser­v­a­tives (Palin, Bach­mann and Cain) all run­ning at the same time. Do the math:

(Social Conservatives+Tea Party) /​(Sarah Palin+Michelle Bach­mann + Her­man Cain) = Rom­ney wins in early primaries

This is the math that got us John McCain in 2008. If it doesn’t scare you it ought to.

Update: Jazz Shaw has a dif­fer­ent, but not unrea­son­able take

if we absolutely must pick win­ners and losers in these things, in the most unsur­pris­ing con­clu­sion of all time I’d say round one went to T-​Paw. But if Cain can keep turn­ing in per­for­mances like that con­sis­tently, the rest of the pack may need to start keep­ing an eye over their shoulders.

It’s a lot more respect­ful than the unsur­pris­ing snark from the Frum Forum.

Update 2: Doug at Out­side the belt­way calls it the Clash of the Pyg­mies, I’m sure many an explorer laughed at “pyg­mies” right up until they got a spear in their gut. Some­how that right wing out­fit CBS news has the same conclusion