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Jewish World Review Oct 17, 2011 / 19 Tishrei, 5772 Cain stakes his viable claim just by showing up By Deroy Murdock
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"Ninety percent of success is showing up," Woody Allen once observed. This helps explain why Herman Cain is soaring and Rick Perry has gone as flat as the Texas plains.
Turn on a TV, and there is the former Godfather's Pizza CEO. From Fox and Friends to Face the Nation to The Tonight Show, the one-time chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve advances his message -- virtually everywhere but the Weather Channel.
After Sept. 22, critics slammed Perry for letting children of illegal aliens pay in-state tuition at Texas' state universities. A lingering controversy soon re-emerged regarding a hunting camp that Perry's family leased years ago. Long called "Niggerhead," Perry's father painted over that hideous word, which polluted a rock near the entrance. Precisely when the elder Perry did so remains unclear.
And just after introducing Texas' governor on Oct. 7 to the Values Voters Summit in Washington, Rev. Robert Jeffress, Perry's pastor, declared: "Mormonism is a cult." Perry has yet to repudiate that insult.
Amid these media cyclones, where was Perry? He evidently vanished into the federal Candidate Protection Program. Rather than offer his side of these breaking stories, Perry largely faded into the sagebrush. Between the two latest GOP debates, Perry did two CNBC interviews and zero network spots.
Since Ronald Reagan left Washington in 1989, Republicans have yearned for a presidential nominee who could present free-market ideas with passion, energy, and commitment. They have longed for someone who would labor for limited government.
Herman Cain embodies the Reagan approach. He is confident, tough, and combative, yet sunny, funny, and buoyant. Cain permanently could demolish the Democrats' vile, vulgar lie that the GOP is the Vatican of U.S. racism.
If Republicans nominate Cain, the Democrats' default argument against the Right utterly implodes. Liberals then might have to battle conservatives on the merits.
Cain does not need to win 60 percent or even 40 percent of the black electorate. If 20 percent to 25 percent of black voters support this successful, self-made son of a maid and a chauffeur, the Democratic base dissolves, and victory belongs to Cain and many down-ballot Republicans wise enough to clutch his coattails.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Rick Perry increasingly resembles another candidate who was expected to electrify the 2008 primaries. Former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., entered the GOP fray to great fanfare in September 2007.
Thompson first debated his opponents in Dearborn, Mich., the next month. He took off the rest of that week and then largely avoided the spotlight. One rival campaign strategist dubbed this situation "the hunt for Fred in October."
To the astonishment of so many of his supporters -- and to Cain's growing advantage -- Perry evidently has spurned Ronald Reagan's example and embraced Fred Thompson's.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Comment by clicking here. Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
• 10/07/11: Green jobs are national scandal • 10/04/11: Obama proudly declares class war • 09/23/11: Obama wrong about ‘Do-Nothing’ Congress • 09/16/11: Obama needs Ryan's vision on jobs • 09/09/11: Reaganomics trounces Obamanomics • 09/02/11: Labor leaders to Obama: Stop killing jobs • 08/26/11: Pro-market Perry vaults over Romney in GOP race • 08/19/11: Some rich Americans will not rest until Washington boosts their taxes • 08/12/11: Hope, change and free birth control for all • 08/05/11: Debt deal does virtually nothing • 07/21/11: Dems pro-choice on abortion but little else • 07/15/11: Debt deception: If only Dems were honest and GOPers were courageous • 07/08/11: Congress' war on light bulb blows up
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Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||
