The Soggy Sandwich Society
What’s most important to you in deciding whom you can support as a presidential candidate?
The 2012 election is a strange one for me, on a personal level, because prior to just last month, I had zero emotional investment in any of the declared candidates.
I have been a supporter of Governor Sarah Palin since 2008 and hoped she’d run for president this year; I respect her decision to not enter the race as I expected, but still nurse great disappointment because I believe the Governor would have won not just the nomination but the White House. As a Hillary Clinton supporter in 2003, it’s deja vu all over again for me, because Hillary was convinced by her own party establishment not to run in 2004 but to wait for another turn…and she missed her window for the White House. I hope the same thing doesn’t happen to Governor Palin in the end, but wish she’d made her move in 2012 when I believe it’s nearly impossible for Barack Obama to win re-election.
With Palin out of the race, I had to take a look at the declared candidates running for the presidency and pick one of them to support.
The only candidate I had any negative feelings towards was Mittens Romneycare, whom I see as the definitive embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the Republican Party today. To understand what alienates so many people from the GOP and keeps many of the “bitter, clinging, Midwesterners” (as Obama described us) from voting Republican you need only observe Mittens in action. He takes both sides of every issue and stands for nothing but his own election. He claims to have not spent his entire life in politics, conveniently “forgetting” that’s only because he’s lost every election he ran in save for this single stint at Massachusetts Governor. It’s convenient he forgets this, because he’s the “Republican Michael Dukakis” who created the basis for Obamacare — Romneycare — while he was in office. The entire “Occupy Wall Street” astroturfing operation you see in major cities across the country has been orchestrated by ACORN to breed foot soldiers for Obama to tear Mittens Romney apart in a general election…since there are just three people I can think of that perfectly fit the caricature of a Wall Street fat cat the Occupoopers believe deserve massive comeuppance: Gordan Gekko (from the movie Wall Street), Mr. Monopoly (the cartoon mascot from the Parker Brothers game), and Willard Mittens “Mitt” Romneycare.
In 2008, the Left and its agenda-driven media enablers seeded the race with a youthful vibe early on because the plan involved orchestrating the nomination of ancient and decrepit-looking John McCain, so that Barack Obama could win the presidency in a “Youth vs. Age” election; in 2012, the Left and its agenda-driven media enablers are seeding the race with an “Occupy Wall Street” vibe this early in the process so that by the time the Left succeeds in picking Mittens Romneycare as the GOP nominee, they’ll have mobilized a large and vicious mob to tear him to pieces and secure Obama’s re-election.
The Left knows it can’t run on Obama’s record or that Nobel Peace Prize he won for “being awesome” in 2009. The only positive attribute ever ascribed to Mittens is that “he was a Wall Street businessman a long time ago”; the Left is taking this positive away from Mittens, starting now, just as a Mittens nomination for 2012 will take Obamacare’s disastrous impact on our economy off the campaign table because of Mittens’ own Romneycare.
The Cocktail Party GOP establishment is foolishly pushing the “it’s his turn!” and “we’ve been counting on campaign jobs with him!” candidate when having Mittens on the 2012 ticket means that every rightful criticism of Obamcare will be met with a “well, Mitt Romney did the same thing in Massachusetts, and in fact is the architect of Obamacare” from every Democrat surrogate speaker.
The Romneycare candidacy will be more of a disaster than the lackluster and foolish Washington Generals-inspired non-campaign McCain mustered in 2008.
Why Republicans keep allowing the Left and its agenda-driven enablers to select their presidential nominees is a mystery I just can’t seem to solve.
So, I’ve known from the beginning that I cannot support Mitt Romney in any way at all. I will not campaign for him, and I will not vote for him, because I will not give my blessing to the suicidal “it’s his turn!” stupidity evidenced time and again by the Cocktail Party GOP establishment. With that firmly settled, I needed to take a solid look at the remaining contenders for the nomination.
Here are the five things that were important to me in determining whom I support (please add your own criteria in comments below):
Question: What will you do if the Cocktail Party establishment succeeds in making Mitt Romney the nominee?
Dear HillBuzz,
Romney is definitely not my first choice. I like Cane. But what are you going to do if he does get nominated? Any of the Republican candidates is much better than Obama, including even Ron Paul with his isolationist/McGovern-like foreign policy. I’d like to remind you of Reagan’s “11th commandment”: never speak ill of a fellow Republican. Right now all these attacks on Romney make it much easier for Obama to win, should Romney get the nomination. Ultimately we all want Obama to lose in 2012. So, he is the one we need to attack. People were saying that McCain or Hillary were Obama-light. But any “Obama-light” would be infinitely better than “Obama-full version”.
Eric
***************************************
Dear Eric,
Thank you for writing in. I’ve never seen you post here before to the best of my knowledge, so I don’t know you or your motivations with this message. I did run your IP and email addresses through the search options we have on the site, and you’ve never left a comment before. That’s odd, since typically first-time commenters don’t write this much, or have such a specific focus in their questioning. Hmmmm.
I am going to assume for the sake of argument that you are not a Cocktail Party establishment operative or someone connected to the Romney campaign in any way and I will answer your questions as best I can as you have asked them. I invite readers to use the comment thread to respond directly to you as well so you can see what they think too.
You wrote: Romney is definitely not my first choice.
Mittens Romneycare is not my choice at all, so we agree on this. Off to a great start!
You wrote: I like Cane.
As do I, but it’s Halloween, not Christmas. Candy canes won’t be in the stores for at least another week or so. If you’re talking about presidential candidate Herman Cain, his name is spelled with an “i”, not an “e”.
You wrote: But what are you going to do if he does get nominated?
Who gets nominated? Are you talking about Mittens Romneycare or Herman Cain? I’m assuming you mean Mittens, and I’ll proceed under that assumption going forward. I do want to point out that you write in classic troll parlance, whether you intend to or not. See what you did here? You said something in the first line to establish a connection with me, since you know I don’t support Mittens. In the second line, you strengthen that connection by telling me you like “Cane” (sic)…which is intended, I presume, to make us buds, since we have so much in common. Then you ask about what I’d do if Mittens is nominated. Now, I don’t know you, or your intentions, but I’ll tell you how I naturally interpret this: as trolling for Romney, for whatever reason. “Well, just like you I don’t like Romney, I like Cain just like you do, but I’m someone who is getting myself ready for the inevitable nomination of Romney and I think you should too”. Is that what you are saying, Eric?
You said: Any of the Republican candidates is much better than Obama, including even Ron Paul with his isolationist/McGovern-like foreign policy.
This gets into interesting territory. I’m honestly very conflicted on whether or not I think going along with the Cocktail Party’s coronation of Romney is better than a second term for Obama. Have you noticed how aggressively the agenda-driven media and the Left are pushing Mittens Romneycare to be the GOP nominee? Don’t you think it’s strange that the Cocktail Party GOP establishment, the Left, the Obama White House, and the agenda-driven media all want Mittens Romneycare to be the 2012 Republican nominee? Isn’t that odd…and more than a little deja vu of the 2008 push by these very same groups to make John McCain the “it’s his turn, he’s inevitable” nominee?
I personally believe Mittens Romneycare is being pushed so hard towards the nomination because the Left knows Obama is a one-term president. Accepting his inevitable loss, the Left is trying its best to secure a Republican president to follow him who will be wholly ineffectual and won’t be willing to do any of the things that need to be done to get this country back on track. The Left knows how much Mittens flip-flops and how meek and indecisive he is, so I believe they are counting on that to assure things like public sector union reform, the elimination of illegal immigration, tax reform, and a balanced budget don’t happen in the next administration. This way, the country stays in financial ruin under someone like Romney, which opens the door for Democrats to retake power in 2016. I assume the 46th President (the one who would kick Mittens’ sorry can in the 2016 election) won’t enact any substantive reforms either and certainly wouldn’t scale back the scope and size of government; this means America would have to wait until 2021, and the 47th President, for a shot at making the tough decisions that could rescue our economy.
Is that really better than Obama winning a second term and a conservative Republican we can trust winning the nomination and presidency in 2016 and saving us from ruin four years sooner?
I don’t trust Mittens Romneycare to be the tough, effective, and unapologetically conservative president we need in office right now…and I don’t buy into the “anyone is better than Obama” lie the Cocktail Party establishment, the Left, and the agenda-driven media are working hard to sell people like you, Eric.
As for Dr. Paul, and your comments about him, I find it strange that someone who misspelled Herman Cain’s last name (perhaps deliberately) would then go on to include a McGovern reference and know that McGovern was associated with an isolationist school of thought. That’s just strange to me. I feel like the remark about Dr. Paul was copy and pasted off something, or taken from a list of key words assigned to denigrate Dr. Paul. Perhaps you slipped this in here because my friend Kathleen Gee is a Paul supporter and I encourage her to express her thoughts on Dr. Paul freely.
You might be only a casual reader who doesn’t know that I’m not a Paul supporter and spend very little time thinking about Dr. Paul. So it’s just odd that a pejorative reference to him was tacked on randomly to a sentence like this.
Curiouser and curiouser.
You said: I’d like to remind you of Reagan’s “11th commandment”: never speak ill of a fellow Republican.
I’d like to tell you how stupid you are if you really think like this.
This is the Republican primary season, when someone will be chosen to succeed Barack Obama in the White House. Now is the time to really grill the candidates before us to determine who can be trusted to make the tough decisions ahead that will save our country from ruin. I do not believe Mittens Romneycare is the man to do this. I have zero faith in his ability to lead this country. I will never support him. I do not like him, I do not trust him, I do not want him to be the Republican nominee. I have thought long and hard on this and I can honestly say that even when pressed I could not think of anything good to say about Mittens Romneycare. He has taken both sides of every issue and proved himself to be untrustworthy and undeserving of my faith, hope, or respect. If the Cocktail Party GOP establishment, the Left, and the agenda-driven media succeed in installing Mittens as the Republican nominee, I will devote myself to reminding Americans of Obama’s record and everything terrible the Left has done to this country during Obama’s term. I will focus my energy on getting as many people as possible to NOT vote for Barack Obama again. But I am just not creative enough of a writer to publish a non-satire, April Fool’s styled essay advocating Mittens Romneycare because this man is truly the very embodiment of everything I think is dead wrong with the Republican Party.
If he’s on the ballot, I won’t vote for Mittens Romneycare; I will vote third party. If Obama wins, it will be the fault of the Cocktail Party GOP establishment for forcing another John McCain onto conservative voters because the establishment assumed we had no choice but to vote for Romney.
That’s why I keep repeating that a vote for Mittens Romneycare in the primaries is really a vote for Barack Obama in the general election, since if Romneycare is the nominee I believe Obama will be re-elected and the Republican Party as we know it will be effectively destroyed because I for one intend to join the ranks of fed-up conservatives who are not going to sit back and let the Cocktail Party establishment force another terrible, untrustworthy, “it’s his turn” candidate upon us again.
You said: Right now all these attacks on Romney make it much easier for Obama to win, should Romney get the nomination.
With all due respect, this is pure stupidity on your part. Now I really believe you are on the Romney payroll.
What would you have people do? Sit back and pretend there’s no problem at all with Romney?
Don’t you realize the Left and its media enablers intend to do to Mittens exactly what they did to McCain in 2008? They pen love letters to him during the primaries, but as soon as he’d become the nominee they’ll hit him with well-prepared hatemail. Mittens, like McCain before him, seems foolish enough to believe “They love me, they really love me, and they’d never, ever turn on me”.
What you really want is for everyone to be quiet about Mittens Romneycare’s immense flaws and, I believe, ineligibility for office (based on the fact I just can’t trust this man to do a good job as president) so that the Left can just say all of the exact same things in the general election, which would hand Obama re-election.
This is what perplexes me most about Republicans: they just keep repeating this same mistake, and never seem to learn from it. I really have to say that if conservatives fall for this garbage again, after having this happen so clearly just three years ago, then we’ll all have to come to the sad realization that these voters are just stupid and beyond any help or hope.
You said: Ultimately we all want Obama to lose in 2012.
True. But with the caveat that I want him to lose to someone who will be better than him in office. That person is not Mittens Romneycare. I also want to point out that this is classic troll-speak, when you use phrasings like “ultimately we all want…”. Psychologically, a troll would do this to establish more of that “Hey, I’m just like you! We’re in this together!” comradery because you think that will make me more apt to listen to you and do what you tell me to do.
What you don’t realize is that I’ve run this site for three and half years now, so I’ve read letters like this from hundreds of paid operatives who’ve written in with similar remarks. In all this time, I’ve never once seen such repetition and similarities in comments or emails from real people without agendas. But the troll comments always sound so similar to one another. With all the same phrasings, the same formula used to get to their points, the same deliberate misspellings of easy-to-spell words that trolls believe make them seem more like regular people (who, trolls think, can’t spell or don’t proofread).
Curiouser and curiouser.
You said: So, he is the one we need to attack.
I have plenty of time to attack both Barack Obama and Mittens Romneycare and intend to keep doing just that, thank you very much, because I don’t want either of these men to be president.
You said: People were saying that McCain or Hillary were Obama-light. But any “Obama-light” would be infinitely better than “Obama-full version”.
Oh, Mary, now you done did it. You realize I worked for Hillary Clinton, right? I pretty much gave up my entire life to do everything I humanly could to prevent Barack Obama from scoring the Democrat nomination…and then threw whatever I had left into trying to stop him from becoming president in 2008 because I knew full well what he would do in office.
The reason the Left destroyed Hillary Clinton’s campaign is because the Left knew Hillary would not blindly allow the Left to do whatever it wanted if she was in the Oval Office. The Left wanted a puppet who just wanted the presidency for the perks — a narcissistic fool who’d gladly do whatever his handlers told him, so long as he got to play golf, fly around on a fancy plane, and sleep in Buckingham Palace on visits to London (where I wouldn’t be surprised if he deliberately wet the sheets, just because he could and because he wanted to stick it to the British this way).
John McCain is certainly Democrat-Lite and I might even call him Hillary-Lite, but you are someone who has really not paid much attention to Barack Obama if you consider either of these people Obama-Lite. Hillary and McCain love this country. Both have their faults in their own ways. I love the former on a personal level and always will…and I tolerated the latter as best I could for as long as I could in 2008 because he would have made a better president than Obama.
But I just don’t have the ability to go through that again with Mittens Romneycare.
Conservatives deserve a better candidate than him. America deserves a better president than Mittens would make.
If Mittens is the ultimate nominee, I promise I won’t do anything to hurt him in the general election, but I won’t help him and I probably won’t vote for him either. I will devote all my energy to making sure people understand just how much damage Obama would do to this country in a second term and then I’d look for a candidate on the ballot who I could trust with the presidency. If that candidate is someone from a third or fourth party I’d never heard of before, but was a candidate who I’d trust not to do the Left’s bidding and wasn’t part of the Cocktail Party GOP establishment, then she or he would have my vote.
And the next day I would start a new search for a conservative candidate I trusted and believed in who I would spend the next few years trying to convince to run for office in 2016.
You said: “Obama-light” would be infinitely better than “Obama-full version”.
I think you are dead wrong on this.
The stakes are too high to settle for an “Obama-Lite” in Mittens Romneycare.
It is beyond foolish to believe a “Democrat-Lite” is the best Republicans can do in 2012.
I just won’t be a part of this stupidity.
And I will not fall in line to blindly do whatever the Cocktail Party GOP establishment tells me to do because unlike you I am not on their payroll.
I WISH I was paid to do this, because I’d sure love to no longer run this site for free or spend everything I have to keep it alive, but apparently I keep missing the email from the recruiters that hire trolls like you. Send them my way if you can, though. I could really use a steady paycheck.
Thanks for writing in!
K.D for HB
What do you think of the letter from “Eric” above?
Troll or not?
If he’s a troll, who sent him — the Left, the Cocktail Party establishment, or the Romneycare campaign?
I’d love your thoughts on all this.
A real test for the GOP candidates: who will show the most support to Ohio’s efforts to curtail the power of the public sector unions?
I need your help in monitoring the GOP presidential candidates’ support for Ohio’s efforts to curtail the power of the public sector unions.
Ohio is my home state, and though I will probably never live there again, I will always love it and do anything I can do in my career to help all efforts to bring jobs and prosperity back to the Buckeye State.
I watched the Unions destroy my home town of Cleveland; the Unions drove factories out of business and sent companies packing all through the 80s and 90s, leaving what had once been the 8th largest city in the country at the turn of the century (with the most beautiful street in the world, Euclid Avenue, at the time) an absolute ruin of its former self.
Ohio is in the shape it’s in because of the Unions and the Democrats who feed off Union contributions and rely on Unions as goon squads; the Unions, of course, funnel the tax dollars they loot from the Treasury back into the Democrat Party’s coffers. It is a vicious cycle that destroyed my home town and my home state.
The only chance this country has of bringing cities like Cleveland and states like Ohio back to life is the curtailing of Union power and the elimination of the Unions as a tool of the Democrat Party.
If a Republican does not want to take on the public sector unions — or like Mittens Romneycare, does not support other people’s efforts to take on the Unions — then I just can’t ever support that Republican for office.
I urge you to strongly consider the ramifications of backing any Republican who won’t take a stand against the Unions.
The only reason the Left gained control of this country is because the Cocktail Party GOP establishment was either too cowardly or too stupid to stand up to the Leftists (or, in another theory, too in league with the Left and too concerned with all the perks that come with Vichy-style quisling alignment with the Left). In 2008, the Cocktail Party foisted Leftist enabler John McCain as the GOP nominee; in 2012, the Cocktail Party is aggressively pushing Mittens Romneycare as the “it’s his turn!” candidate who intends to do absolutely nothing to challenge the public sector unions’ parasitic drain on state treasuries.
I strongly encourage you to decide, at this moment in time, to take a stand against both the Unions and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment that have allowed them to do so much damage to America.
We really need to pay close attention to what Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Mittens Romneycare do in the next two weeks leading up to the important vote in Ohio to curtail the public sector unions’ power there.
Today, Mittens stood on the side of the Unions and refused to give his support to the effort to curb their power. I believe this disqualifies Mittens from the presidency. Permanently.
I want to see what the other candidates do — and if anyone of them join Mittens in siding with the Union against the reform efforts in Ohio led by Governor Kasich, then those candidates should be disqualified too.
It is THAT simple for me.
If you are pro-Union, then you should not be the Republican nominee.
If you are a candidate like Mittens Romneycare who flip-flops and forever endeavors to avoid taking any side, or offending anyone, or going on record as being against ANYTHING, then you should not be the Republican nominee.
The next president will have a herculean task in front of him…it is going to take a lot of tough and unpopular decisions to rescue this country from four years of ruin.
If a man like Mittens is not willing to stand up to the Unions in Ohio a year before the election, I don’t have any faith he’ll stand up to the Unions the day after his Inauguration either. Mittens will, of course, be too concerned with being re-elected to change his ways and start making the tough and unpopular (but correct for the country’s well-being) decisions he’s avoided his entire life. We just can’t trust this man in office — he is too much of a cephalopod slime ball…no backbone…all squishy mush…with tentacles stretched across both sides, pulling himself wherever he thinks is most advantageous for his own personal enrichment.
Can you help keep track of what the Republican candidates are saying and doing to aid the Union reform effort in Ohio?
Great Merciful Zeus. Mark your calendars…today will be looked on as the day Mittens Romneycare officially lost the Republican nomination by siding with the Labor Unions in Ohio
[ Mittens Romneycare: the Cocktail Party GOP establishment's "it's his turn candidate" who intends to do absolutely nothing to combat the public sector unions in this country...a soggy cucumber and mayonnaise sandwich if ever there was one ]
Oddly enough, today I was working on a longer essay on why, exactly, I can never bring myself to support Mittens Romneycare in any capacity. I think my list had about 14 items to begin with, before Mittens delivered #15 today when he sided with the Labor Unions in Ohio against public sector employee reform that’s much needed to save my home state from financial ruin.
I didn’t like Mittens Romneycare earlier today…but I have to say I really and truly can’t stand this man now.
While at a GOP call center in Ohio where volunteers were working hard to support Governor Kasich’s effort to rein in the out of control public sector unions, Mittens refused to support the Governor’s efforts.
Every Republican coast to coast should be supporting the decertification of the Unions, particularly those working for taxpayers.
Even Steve Jobs believed the teachers’ unions, specifically, should be annihilated.
The Unions — for decades now — have been nothing more than a funding source for the Democrat Party, where tax dollars are funneled from taxpayers into the DNC’s coffers. Democrats then vote aggressively to channel more tax dollars into union hands, so even more money goes into the DNC.
This is why almost every “blue state” controlled by the Democrat-Union coalition is bankrupt.
I have said repeatedly on this site that the Cocktail Party GOP establishment is pushing Mittens Romneycare towards the Republican nomination, but that the Left and its agenda-driven media enablers are also pushing Mittens to be the Republican nominee as well. The reason for this is simple: both the permanent political class (on either side of the aisle) and the media know that if elected Mittens would do absolutely nothing to dismantle the status quo that’s bankrupted this country.
Mittens is only interested in being president for the perks and to get his name in the history books because his father wanted to be president before him; Mittens is much like Obama in this regard, and much like Obama Mittens will do nothing to combat the public sector unions or rescue this country from bankruptcy.
I truly believe the people supporting Mittens in the current polls are those who personally benefit from the status quo and don’t want to see anything change in the way our government currently does business.
If you are someone who is fed up with the wasteful spending, the capitulation to the Unions, and the Left’s dominance of this country, then there is just no logical explanation for you ever voting for Mittens Romneycare.
He truly is “the Republican Michael Dukakis” and “Obama-Lite”.
I sincerely detest his cowardice.
He is a shamelessly self-serving and feckless Cocktail Party establishment “it’s my turn!” candidate who will do none of the things so desperately needed to turn this country around.
A vote for Mittens Romneycare is truly a vote for Obama-lite…and, as we’ve seen today, a vote for the public sector unions.
Disgusting.
Is even Massachusetts sick of Romneycare? Repeal effort is underway
[ There's a reason Americans don't want Obamacare...and it's because Obamacare is based on Romneycare, which the people of Massachusetts don't even want]
Dear HillBuzz,
Just letting you know that even blue, blue MA is fed up with Mittens RomneyCare: in fact, there’s a repeal effort going on.
Boston Globe coverage: http://articles.boston.com/2011-10-06/business/30253044_1_repeal-health-care-larger-risk-pool
Website: www.repeal-romneycare.com
It’s a great effort and something that can really influence the national election.
~Bridget L. Fay
Massachusetts
One of the best campaign ads I have ever seen: Herman Cain’s Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em Robots ad
He had me at the Rock ‘em, Sock ‘em Robots.
He got me really fired up with the nod to Rocky at the end.
I like Herman Cain a lot, and not just because he’s the only candidate who finds a way to work 80s band Survivor into his campaign commericals.
He comes off as someone I actually want to know and work for, and not just someone I’d vote for. I wonder every day what interesting thing Herman Cain is going to say, where he’s going to be, and what he’s going to do. I eagerly anticipate his campaign ads because I know they will make me smile or think, or both.
Can’t say the same thing about anyone else in contention for the 2012 GOP nomination.
Can you?
Hilarious. Foolish media and Cocktail Party GOP fall right into Herman Cain’s trap with his “Mark Block Smoking Ad”
On a very personal level, I really like Herman Cain.
First off, he reminds me of a guy named Howard I worked with fifteen years ago when I was in college. Howard was the Food & Beverage manager while I was the Security manager at a hotel on third shift; he was, like Cain, also a singer in his church and was known for always having a different take on things from what everyone else on the executive team was saying. Our General Manager at the time was a complete buffoon who would fit in quite well with the Cocktail Party GOP crowd (strangely, the guy kind of resembled Jon Huntsman in a way). Howard and I ended up being the only two people at the table who would tell the GM something was stupid during a staff meeting if either of us knew whatever the GM wanted to do on a whim would be a complete and utter disaster. I always knew that if I spoke up about something, Howard would have my back, and he’d pepper his remarks with interesting things to say of his own that really got people’s attention. To this day, Howard remains one of my favorite people I have ever known.
I’ve never met Herman Cain, but this is how he comes across to me as a candidate. Like Howard, Herman Cain doesn’t claim to know everything or to be infallible (the way Barack Obama does, with disastrous results) but he sure knows how to speak truth to power and surround himself with people who know exactly what they are doing and can be led by him to solve large problems. I like Cain’s track record as a business executive turning around failing franchises and being so good at what he did that he was made the CEO of a large company. I also like that instead of the usual, foolish Cocktail Party GOP establishment consultants Cain picks oddballs and outsiders to run his campaign. As an outsider oddball myself, I appreciate the potential in this, since Cain’s campaign will be the most unconventional of all the candidates. Since convention over the last thirty years has gotten us where we are today, I think “unconventional” is a good thing.
I love how the media and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment alike have done exactly what Herman Cain wanted them to do regarding the campaign ad above.
It’s a cheap, little ad thrown together for almost nothing, with Herman Cain’s chief of staff Mark Block talking mildly into a camera…and then smoking a cigarette at the end. That cigarette was bait…so that Cain’s campaign could get free air time in the media as various fools went on about Mark Block smoking and how terrible and odd it was.
Chances are, few people have ever heard of Mark Block before this. I admit I had never heard this man’s name before either (but I think he very much resembles Carl Monday — a local reporter who dresses up in trench coats to solve mysteries on Channel 19 in Cleveland; if you are an evildoer in the Northeast Ohio general vicinity, you must live in terror of Carl Monday knocking on your door).
I can’t name a single person working for any of the other GOP candidates, but I now know who Mark Block is. And I kind of like him, in a Carl Monday sort of way, because he’s certainly not a Cocktail Party-approved consultant. I also think Block looks and acts like a lot of people who will be voting in the Iowa Caucus next year…many of whom are either smokers or are people who don’t like it when the establishment and media tell them they can’t do something (such as smoke in a campaign ad for no apparent reason).
I believe Cain’s intent is to get the media and the Cocktail Party GOP establishment talking about how terrible smokers are or how ridiculous Block looked doing this. The net result of that will be a lot of people in the early primary and caucus states feeling alienated by the media and the Cocktail Party establishment and taking another look at Herman Cain as a result.
I have to admit that I still don’t know what Herman Cain’s end game really is…if he intends to really run for the presidency or if he’s in fact shooting for the VP slot.
I also don’t know if there’s any credence to some people’s fears that he’s really a stalking horse for Mittens Romneycare and that his intent is to prevent consolidation of the anti-Mittens voters so the Cocktail Party can have its way and foist “the Republican version of Michael Dukakis” onto Americans.
I do believe that someone Karl Rove hates is someone you should always support in a Republican primary season, and Rove has been vocal about his feelings against Cain. That’s another plus for Cain in my book, since Rove and the rest of the Cocktail Party establishment crowd are all about maintaining their hold on power. They seem to know that if Cain’s elected, he won’t allow business as usual, and that’s a good thing for Americans. Bad for the consultants and other establishment types, though.
I seem to like Herman Cain more and more each day. He’s someone, like my friend Howard years ago, who I’d like to work with and he comes across as a boss I’d love to work for. He’s also someone I would be proud to call my President.
I really can’t wait for the Cain-Gingrich “Lincoln-Douglas” debate…aside from Halloween and Thanksgiving, it’s the biggest thing I am looking forward to this fall.
