Herman Cain vs Rick Santorum: Santorum is looking better and better

…par­tic­u­larly after this inter­view by Her­man Cain:

No, it comes down to is, it’s not the government’s role — or any­body else’s role — to make that deci­sion. Sec­ondly, if you look at the sta­tis­ti­cal inci­dents, you’re not talk­ing about that that big a num­ber. So what I’m say­ing is, it ulti­mately gets down to a choice that fam­ily or that mother has to make. Not me as pres­i­dent. Not some politi­cian. Not a bureau­crat. It gets down to that fam­ily. And what­ever they decide, they decide. I shouldn’t try to tell them what deci­sion to make for such a sen­si­tive decision.

Yeah, it’s not the gov­ern­ment job to tell a fam­ily if they should hold slaves kill their chil­dren have an abortion.

Does that mean he would appoint Judges who would pro­tect abor­tion? If so, cripes I can get that from Mitt Romney.

Now that won’t hurt him with the tea party since it is a fis­cal rather than a social move­ment (no mat­ter what the left says) but for Catholics like me who first came to the GOP over social issues, Abor­tion is a sine-​non-​qua.

I am still unde­cided, I like Her­man Cain and I think 9−9−9 is a great idea, but this inter­view has def­i­nitely dropped Her­man Cain behind Rick San­to­rum on the list of can­di­dates I support.

Let me give some unso­licited advice to the cam­paign: Take a day off and sit down with your peo­ple and clearly delin­eate your posi­tions, because I’m telling you tweak­ing to make lib­er­als on CNN like you doesn’t fly.

Now Rick San­to­rum, you don’t get equiv­o­ca­tion like that, that’s the dif­fer­ence between an expe­ri­enced pol and an inex­pe­ri­enced one.

Here is the Cain video:

Update: For­got the block quote, but saw this at life news, saw this com­ing a mile away:

For­mer Sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum responded to Cain’s remarks by issu­ing a state­ment say­ing Cain is not fully pro-​life:

“Her­man Cain said that he believes life begins at con­cep­tion, but that it’s up to the indi­vid­ual to decide whether or not to ter­mi­nate that life. And I find it gravely trou­bling that Her­man believes it’s a life, but that he doesn’t con­sider it a life worth fight­ing for. As the author of the par­tial birth abor­tion ban and other pro-​life pieces of leg­is­la­tion, this is the exact men­tal­ity myself and other true pro-​life advo­cates fought against. In fact, Herman’s pro-​choice posi­tion is sim­i­lar to those held by John Kerry, Barack Obama and many oth­ers on the lib­eral left. No, Her­man, it is not ‘what­ever they decide,’this is an inno­cent human life. It is uncon­scionable for Her­man to run for the nom­i­na­tion of the Party that stands in defense of Life while show­ing dis­re­gard for the sanc­tity of Life. You can­not be both per­son­ally against abor­tion while con­don­ing it – you can’t have it both ways. We must defend the defense­less, period.”

Mitt Rom­ney and the estab­lish­ment GOP are fist pump­ing right now.

Update 2: I like Jim­mie Bise a lot, and read­ing this post its almost as if we have only one mind between us:

Chiefly, you must remem­ber that those jour­nal­ists are not your friends. Even if they are not openly hos­tile to you, they want their inter­view with you to make big news. They hope to get their name in the head­lines on Wednes­day because of their inter­view with you on Sun­day. You are no longer an inter­est­ing busi­ness­man or a talk show host but the man who wants to dethrone their beloved Barack Obama. They will not play fair. They will line up a series of “gotcha” ques­tions to trap you. Don’t give them a chance and for good­ness sake, don’t trap your­self. Like I said, that will be hard for you because you’ve built a rep­u­ta­tion as a straight-​shooter, but it’s a skill you’re going to have to learn fast.

I had actu­ally started an “Open Let­ter” post but this really said it per­fectly. And that’s a bit of advice EVERY GOP can­di­date should fol­low. The sec­ond piece of advice is more spe­cific to Her­man Cain:

That brings me to my sec­ond point. You need a solid inner cir­cle. They don’t have to be famous. They don’t have to be polit­i­cal. They do have to be smart and will­ing to tell you things you may not want to hear. And you have to trust them implic­itly. They will be the ones who pre­pare your for inter­views by play­ing Devil’s Advo­cate with you.

His last prob­lem is not get­ting blind­sided, cam­paigns are very busy, and you need an update every morn­ing, as Jimmy suggests:

This is where your inner cir­cle can help you immensely. Just spend some time dur­ing the day in con­ver­sa­tion with them about the news. You don’t have to drill deeply into the issues; table talk along will help give you the basic infor­ma­tion you need. Put some of the top­ics for upcom­ing inter­views on the table and kick them around over din­ner. Those talks will help you more than you think, and they’ll help you relax a bit, too.

Read it all, it’s perfect.