Cain Doubles Down
Steven L. Taylor
·
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
·
3 comments
“I don’t even know who this lady is.”—Herman Cain, regarding the allegation of sexual misconduct by Sharon Bialek.
This strikes me as a dangerous way to play this, as if any evidence can be conjured that Cain did know Bialek, then that will undercut his overall denial. And in this era of cameras everywhere, this strikes me as a dangerous bet for Cain to take unless he is 100% certain of the claim.
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
Back during the height of the BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico, BP made plenty – sometimes daily – press releases about how things got this bad. IIRC, every single, solitary one of those releases was flatly contradicted by reality, often within a day or two. Basically, they were engaging in a defense of “Lie, Lie, and Lie Some More” in the desperate hope that something, somewhere in the world would happen to take everyone’s attention off their disaster. Unfortunately for BP, no other disasters engaged our press throughout that fiasco.
Cain’s PR tactics look mighty familiar…
Assuming that things move in the general direction everyone but Cain thinks they are going to move in, I have three questions:
Question 1: Is it me or is Cain going to end up as the Gary Hart of this political “generation” — at least in terms of what brings him down?
And what’s worse for him is that its clear (especially with a number of conservative outlets running stories against him and pundits slowly walking bac their support) that this is very much the doings of his own party (though blaming “teh liburals” gives them a lot of cover. So that’s a sign that this isn’t going to end well (as in no presidency or talk show) for him. Too much stigma around this and no one’s going to invite him to rally for them.
which leads to…
Question 2: Do you think the issue is Cain has come to believe his own hype (sparked by all of the praise from conservative media)? In other words, does this mean he thinks he has the base no matter what?
and finally…
Question 3: Could this be an issue — especially if a lot of pundits decide to cling to Cain because — like Palin — they spent too much time propping him up (especially when this hit) and would have to issue mea culpas, that this could alienate Republican/Conservative Women?
Well……supposedly, there is evidence……cuz Drew, in another thread, states that Amy Jacobsen saw them “hugging and exchanging pleasantries” recently…..so yeah, I guess it’s a tad dangerous of Cain to go down this path…..cuz, ya know….there’s an IQ thingie somewhere in this…..