'Not with a bang but a whimper'. Herman Cain, the never-was candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, has ended his faux-campaign with, as one might expect, a lie. He says he is "suspending" his campaign, not "ending" it.
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I stated plainly here, on October 20th and again on November 9th, that there was absolutely no possibility of Herman Cain winning the Republican nomination. Yet for months the media have pretended to believe that he could become the Republican nominee, and wasted the public's time with that pretense. EVERYONE — with the possible exception of Herman Cain himself — knew that Cain would not be the nominee, but they wasted our time for months on their pretense that he was to be taken seriously.
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Some good things, however, did result from the attention given to Cain by media and late-nite comedians: the hypocrisy of the "family values" crowd was repeatedly, mercilessly shown. Herman Cain was heard to say to a Conservative media figure that he had no skeletons in his closet! Astounding. He actually thought that the 24-hour news media, hungry for things to fill empty hours on their schedule, would fail to root out his history of sexual harassment and marital infidelity! Perhaps Cain's comeuppance will dissuade other liars from trying to hide the truth.
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He should just have said upfront:

I'm not perfect. I have an eye for the ladies, and I have indulged my wanderlust. But I'm not running for saint. I'm running for President. A President has to be strong, not hamstrung by moral principles taken to extremes. A President might have to wage war, a very ugly business. The public cannot really expect someone too tenderhearted to do what needs to be done to defeat the Nation's enemies, at home as much as abroad. And who cares if a President has a strong sex drive? That's not the people's business. It's the candidate's own business, as your sex life is your own business. Conservatives don't want the Government telling them what to do in the privacy of their own bedroom. They want Government to tend to PUBLIC business, not private.

That would not have made the slitest difference in his failed campaign, of course, since he had absolutely no chance of becoming the nominee of today's hyper-racist, Radical Right Tea/Republican Party. But it would have put his attackers at a slite disadvantage.
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Perhaps the next person tempted to run for public office despite skeletons in his (or her) closet will be more forthrite. And that can only improve the quality of political contests, and lead the electorate to stop demanding sexual saintliness of public officials.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,483 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:07 PM