The Cain Brain: In advance of tonight’s GOP debate, everybody is tabbing new polling frontrunner Herman Cain as the man to watch. Since last debate, however, he’s absorbed scrutiny over his foreign policy credentials (or lack thereof), which has been exacerbated by Cain’s refusal to name his advisers. He himself spoke to this strategy in Tennessee last week: “I’m not going to tell you! They’re my advisers, not yours. They just want to know who my smart people are so they can attack them.” This is a tact that we don’t think will benefit Cain. Voters like to feel as if candidates are being more open than they need to, not less. Employing a “need to know basis” sort of argument over his adviser’s very identities just comes off badly. source
Looks like Electronic Arts just hopped onto the mocking-Herman-Cain bandwagon, playing the SimCity 999 plan to their best strategic advantage. Love it.
Herman Cain sings pizza-themed variation on “Imagine”: In case you’re wondering if he actually says “Imagine there’s no pizza,” he does. Oh yes, he does. With extra cheese.
Cain allegedly has deep ties to the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity. The currently-soaring presidential candidate has built up his base with GOP voters through an image that he’s a non-politician who’s not beholden to anyone (and makes a good pizza). But Cain has a history with the controversy-laden Koch brothers that he does not promote very heavily — at least not as heavily as his business career. The Associated Press’s article on Cain’s deep ties to Americans for Prosperity found some fairly surprising things:
» Ties that still stand: While Cain no longer gets paid for his appearances with AFP (he used to, before he started running for president), he is still active with the group. For example, Cain will speak at an AFP event in DC on November 4, despite the fact that most of the other presidential candidates will be at a dinner in Iowa. The caucus is in Iowa; what’s this guy doing in Washington? Wait a second! (photo by Flickr user Gage Skidmore)
curiousontheroad said: Do these polls mean anything at this time? We haven’t even had the first primary yet, and last election season polls were notoriously unreliable. And what’s the margin of error on this one? Aren’t Romney and Cain just statistically tied?
mdt says: Well, Trump was once at 26%. Perry has been as high as 29%. Bachmann hit 30% a while back. All meaningless. These polls don’t equate well to measuring the dynamics of the primaries. Cain hasn’t visited Iowa since the straw poll. He’ll collapse.
» SFB says: Ok, let’s be fair. It’s still early, and the lead has changed many times already. Look at this less as a barometer of who’s going to be president and more as a barometer of focus: We’re going to hear a lot from Cain at the next debate and in the press as a result of this. The secret for him will be to actually keep it up and build upon his polling, which Mitt has done well. And to the margin-of-error-question, the PPP poll has a margin of error of 4.5 percent, meaning that, in this poll, he’s straight-up ahead. The NBC News/WSJ poll, however, has a plus/minus of 5.35 percent, which means that in that one, they’re statistically tied. Ultimately, though, even considering that, he essentially was a non-entity two months ago, so this is a significant jump. — Ernie @ SFB
Oh wait, Cain’s the frontrunner in a second poll. Public Policy Polling has Cain ahead of Romney 30-22, which can be explained in one way: Strong Tea Party support. “Strong Tea Party support has Cain in the driver’s seat nationally, just as he has been on our last four individual state polls,” PPP notes. “With non-Tea Party Republicans Romney actually leads Cain 29-27. But with the Tea Party crowd Cain is getting 39% with Gingrich at 16%, Perry at 14%, and Romney in 4th place at 13%. Romney doesn’t need to win the Tea Partiers to be the Republican nominee. But he does need to finish better than 4th with them.”
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
Frontrunner? Herman Cain leapfrogs Romney in new 2012 poll: And it’s a big leap, too: Cain is at a solid 27 percent in the NBC News/WSJ poll, with Romney at 23 percent and Perry way behind with 16 percent. This despite the fact that Romney won handily on Tuesday. source
kohenari asks: I live incredibly nearby that address on The Herminator's old website. Small world.
» SFB says: You should stop by and take photos, just for kicks. At the very least, you’d get a funny blog post out of it. — Ernie @ SFB
The old websites of Republican presidential candidates. (via MentalFloss)
THE HERMANATOR EXPERIENCE.
This is everything we expected, and more.
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We have this theory: If a rapidly-rising GOP politician shows up on the cover of Newsweek, they immediately stop being a viable candidate. See how quickly Bachmann became a non-entity after her Newsweek cover? This is a pretty straightforward Newsweek cover, either way.