Sunday, June 5, 2011

Herman Cain (Black Republican) Can't Save the GOP (From The Root)

Herman Cain Can't Save the GOP

The Pizza Man might not be president -- but can he deliver black voters to the Republican Party?

Herman Cain Can't Save the GOP
Getty Images

The day after Herman Cain won the GOP's first 2012 presidential debate, I recapped it thusly: "Just minutes after the debate ended, an on-air focus group run by Fox News pollster Frank Luntz declared, almost unanimously, that Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO, was the debate's winner. Their reaction: 'He's a problem solver.' "

It made sense. He's not a household name, but talk radio devotees know Cain from his own show and his regular guest spots subbing for conservative talk luminaries like Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity.

But I was brought back to reality when my wife, a no-nonsense focus group of one, made her blunt assessment of Cain -- "He won't be the nominee" -- and then quickly dismissed my analysis with a Beverly Hills Cop flourish, adding, "You just fell for the banana in the tailpipe."

Her take? The focus group's on-the-spot endorsement had less to do with Cain than with the subpar showing of the other candidates. Cain's edge, as New York Times polling guru Nate Silver writes, is that "in a field where the three insider favorites to win the race -- Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Jon Huntsman -- collectively poll at just 25 percent, and where some Republicans seem to be pining for an outsider (perhaps even outside-the-box) choice, he's the freshest face."

After getting 10 percent in last week's CNN/Opinion Research poll, 15 percent in this week's Public Policy Polling poll and a respectable 8 percent in last week's Gallup poll, boosted by a high "positive intensity" score among all the contenders, Cain -- the only African American in the GOP field -- is getting noticed by the national media.

Noticed, but not taken completely seriously. Most coverage describes Cain as a popular long shot, adding -- ahem -- color to an otherwise drab field. To his credit, Cain looks as if he's running to win, and not to be the latest Alan Keyes-esque protest candidate. His talk-radio style, corporate success and lack of officeholding experience give him an appealing Tea Party résumé.
Cain's pitch, though, is a lot like the other contenders. He's pretty much against whatever Obama is for.

Which underscores a Cain dilemma. When he tells crowds, "I left that Democrat plantation a long time ago -- and I ain't going back," he's signaling that he's not in the race to be the token African American. But as a black candidate, it'd be useful if his presence in the field did more to expand the GOP base. Cain supports the Fair Tax -- a popular proposal to replace income taxes with a flat, value-added tax -- but otherwise, he's hard to distinguish from the other candidates. On policy, he's not offering much that encourages black, Latino or other typically Democratic-leaning constituencies to take a second look under the GOP's tent flap. Here's why:

 

There's Already a Black Conservative in the Race

It might sound crazy to Republican primary voters desperate to oust the current president, but there's already a black conservative in the 2012 race -- and his name is Barack Obama. As I wrote last year, Obama -- who doubled down in Afghanistan, extended the Bush tax cuts and bailed out the auto industry -- governs like a "Rockefeller Republican." He's a Democrat, but that "says less about him than it does about the odds that in the last half century, a black multimillionaire with a young family would seek (or find) a political home in the GOP."

As the Nation's Melissa Harris-Perry explains, "The core theme of black conservatism is racial self-uplift." And while Cain's personal biography exemplifies the classic "bootstrap" success story, so does Obama's.

 
There's Already an Optimist in the Race
Cain's got personality to burn. You can't help but enjoy his just-released I'm-a-little-bit-country-I'm-a-little-bit-rock-and-roll "Herman Cain Train" video -- complete with cameos by Joe the Plumber and MLK niece Alveda King. It perfectly captures the all-American image that clearly delights Cain supporters. And there's no way you can disagree with Cain when he asks, "Is this a great country or what?," after recalling that his great-great-grandparents were slaves -- and now he's running for president.
 
 

But in contrast to Obama's upbeat, though admittedly corny, "Win the Future" call to arms, Cain consistently goes negative. He regularly deploys "Stupid people are ruining America" as an applause line. He's walked back his earlier suspicions that Muslim Americans are trying to "push Sharia law off on this country." He doesn't just attack Obama's vulnerabilities -- like "ObamaCare" and the burgeoning deficit -- he's opposed to all things Obama, even slamming the president as "weak and timid" just days after the killing of Osama bin Laden. That's how you rally the conservative base, but not how you broaden the GOP's appeal.

 
There's Already a Black President in the White House
Increasingly, if slowly, the African-American electorate is branching out from its near-uniform support of Democrats toward conservative politicians and ideas about government. The Cain candidacy is one step in that direction, but that transition won't accelerate until Republicans put forward candidates more in the mold, ironically, of the late Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.).

Kemp, the GOP's 1996 vice-presidential candidate, was white, in the Reagan administration and known as a supply-side fiscal conservative -- but his calling card was his work on economic "empowerment zones" to incubate entrepreneurship in urban black neighborhoods. In November 2008, Kemp posed, in a very different way, the same rhetorical question as Cain, writing: "My first thought last week upon learning that a 47-year-old African-American Democrat had won the presidency was, 'Is this a great country or not?'"

Indeed it is.
 
And Cain is a candidate to be reckoned with. He'll shake up the debates, put big-name Republicans on their heels, and might win a couple of primaries. But as long as Cain serves up the same anyone-but-Obama line of reasoning that's being offered by his counterparts, he's missing an opportunity to separate himself from the Republican field. If he can't do that, he's not going to be the answer for the GOP.

David Swerdlick is a regular contributor to The Root. Follow him on Twitter.

 

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)