Mark America

Dirty Politics or Unpreparedness?

Think whatever you like of the allegations against Cain, but what I’ve noticed has nothing to do with the details of the case, except for their absence.  Back when Herman Cain was serving as the President of the National Restaurant Association, just a relative few people would have been privy to the allegations and the case at the time.  What is now known is that the cases were to be held in confidence as part of the settlement agreements.  The parties to these cases wouldn’t have an interest in disclosing information about them, so it makes one wonder where the Politico dug all of this up.  If I was a betting man, I’d bet on somebody within the GOP establishment, or alternatively, one of the other non-establishment candidates who would like to topple Cain from the head of that pack.  Chances are, if it was a liberal, they’d have waited until after the nomination fight if Cain won, or accepted a VP offer.  While it’s true that Politico is a left-wing rag, they’ve often managed to get along with the GOP establishment when it suited their immediate political ends.

In their articles on this subject, Politico hasn’t revealed much detail, which only means they don’t have anything salacious on which to hang their hats, or it would be all over the media by now.  What this suggests to me is that whomever their sources may be, they were close enough to know there had been cases, but not close enough to have been bound by confidentiality agreements.  This suggest somebody close to the National Restaurant Association, or somebody at least somehow associated, who knew about the allegations, or the settlements, at least in that they existed, but this all has the stench of somebody with insider knowledge who tipped off somebody at Politico.

What I can’t understand about this is how Cain wasn’t prepared to see this happen.  Did he believe that because the settlement agreements had been made confidential, that nobody would spill the beans about their existence?  That seems naive for a man who spent a fair amount of time in and around Washington DC lobbying circles to know how things work.  Did he think, innocently, because there really had been nothing to the claims that nobody would dredge this up?  I don’t know, but I think it’s somewhat curious that Cain was caught short in this way. After all, if Cain has an Achilles’ heel, it is probably that he’s not quite as skilled in knowing  how the game is played, and one would have thought that he would have hired somebody who knew, and who had already been through an analysis of what the opposition would attempt.  He should have been ready to respond to this, because he should have known, or at least his advisers should have known, that this would be coming.

This is part of what makes the Beltway political scene so disgusting to so many Americans.  Examining this, all we really know is that there were some allegations made at some time by some people and that those allegations consisted of something, and that there had been some kind of settlement, but we know not a single meaningful detail about any of it. Does this sound familiar?  It should, as it is the methodology used to derail candidates year after year, campaign after campaign, and it stinks.  It’s as though the DC Establishment closes ranks to freeze out all others, and this is the manner by which they wage their war: Innuendo, implication, and smear are the tools of DC politics.

Predictably, Politico is now spinning this into a divide among conservatives, but that is mostly a pipe dream on their part, and the part of the Romney camp.  Politico is also trotting out the women’s groups, which have been conveniently absent over the matter of OWS hushing rape victims.  For this, of course, they show up.  Who would like to pretend NOW would ever endorse Herman Cain(or any Republican) over Barack Obama, anyway?

Presidential campaigns are always full of intrigue, and smears, and plain old lies.  For whatever reason, Cain seems hopelessly unprepared for the ferocity of it, and while they continue to deride him on this issue, I don’t think it’s going to matter, because this won’t be all and they’re hardly finished with him yet.  If Cain doesn’t get wise to the ways of establishment politics, they’re going to eat him alive.

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