Herman Cain’s lack of comprehensive campaign structure and experienced advisors may be showing in the wake of sexual hassement allegations. He had ten days to prepare a response for the story and yet he’s contradicted himself again and again in one day. Josh Marshall put up this timeline on TPM for crowdsourcing:
1. Politico allegations are false. Story is crap.
2. Yes, there were allegations. But they were false.
3. Yes there were allegations that were false and I don’t know what money was paid.
4. I don’t know whether money was paid. And it would be wrong for me to find out whether money was paid because it’s confidential.
5. There was a in-depth investigation. And I was cleared. But I don’t know anything about it.
6. Here’s the gesture that led to my getting accused of harassment.
7. Okay, I remember some discussion of a settlement number.
The smart money was saying Cain was never serious about running for President. He was running for lecture fees. But this threatens both. Both primary votes and speaking gigs could dry up if Cain is perceived as a perv or an idiot. Right now he’s looking a little like both.
Didn’t really expect much more from someone whose success as CEO of Godfather’s Pizza was nothing more but closing a couple of hundred stores (and the associated 1,000+ employees) to be profitable. To my knowledge, they were…and still are…the number 5 pizza chain. So no actual improvement overall.
I don’t know. Palin just threw up incomprehensible word salad and got lots of speaking gigs. I find that some people will go listen to anything if the speaker hits certain key words and phrases.
I’ve long suspected that Palin decided not to run because it sounded too much like work and thought the convention would just nominate her by acclamation after all the other “candidates” collapsed. She may have been right.