Outside the Beltway

Cain Campaign Manager Mark Block Lies Again

Doug Mataconis · Wednesday, November 9, 2011 · 3 comments

Last week, Herman Cain’s campaign manger (or “Chief of Staff” or whatever you call him) Mark Block accused a Republican adviser who had worked on Cain’s 2004 Senate campaign of being the source of the Politico story that started the campaign’s current ordeal ten days ago. That accusation was pretty well refuted, although neither Block nor Cain has apologized for accusing Anderson. Last night, Block appeared on Sean Hannity’s show and did it again:

Herman Cain’s chief-of-staff Mark Block on Tuesday wrongly claimed that the son of a woman who accused Cain of sexual harassment worked at POLITICO, a news outlet that first broke the story.

“At the press conference it was brought up that Karen Kraushaar had come out as one of the women, and we’ve come to find out that her son works at Politico,” Block said.

Kraushaar told CNN Tuesday that she accused Cain of sexual harassment when he led the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s. Details of her case emerged through her lawyer last week, but she refused to go public at the time.

When asked if Block had confirmed the information about her “son,” the chief-of-staff said “yes.”

“We’ve confirmed … that he does indeed work at POLITICO and that’s his mother, yes,” Block said.

Even if this were true, I’m not sure what it has to do with anything. Does Block really expect people to believe that Kraushaar got together with this supposed son and said Hey how about if I help you smear Herman Cain? It’s silly beyond belief, and it’s even sillier considering that it’s completely false:

Block appeared to be referring to former POLITICO reporter Josh Kraushaar, who left for another outlet, National Journal, in 2010.

Kraushaar, now Executive Editor of The Hotline over at National Journal, had apparently already noted on Twitter that he was in no way related to the woman who was apparently coming forward to accuse Herman Cain of sexual harassment. That didn’t stop Block, though, which led to series of amusing Tweets from Kraushaar last night:

Mark Block must get his facts from Internet comment boards, based on comments to @hannity. Not related to Karen K and don’t work at Politico

For a presidential spokesman to go on TV and make up blatant falsehoods doesn’t speak well for his boss, either.

The only positive benefit about being smeared by Mark Block on Hannity is I’m getting 100 new Twitter followers a minute.

It would all be pretty funny it weren’t so entirely pathetic. The guy who is supposedly running the campaign of a Republican frontrunner has gone on television on multiple occasions and blatantly lied. Then again, he’s also the guy with a history of campaign finance irregularities who may be at the center of a huge fundraising law violation in the Cain campaign itself. Ed Morrissey says Block should be fired, and he’s right of course (I doubt Cain will, by the way), but the truth is he never should have been hired and the fact that this is the kind of person Herman Cain would hire speaks volumes about him. The fact that Herman Cain continues to lead in the polls, of course, speaks volumes about Republican voters in 2011.