Thursday, October 27, 2011

romney is driving the entire GOP primary

IMHO, the reason that cain is doing so well has little to do with cain, despite the unprecedented nature of his campaign, the fact that he is making all the wrong moves, that his campaign is in chaos, that he's not raising any money, that he doesn't have any major endorsements, that he appears to be on a book tour rather than a presidential campaign, that he can't even give a straight party-line answer to a fairly simple question about an issue important to the GOP base, and that he has released a campaign commercial that has already entered the le bad pantheon. that's because this isn't about cain.

it's all about romney. a large portion of the GOP primary voters hate romney and they are looking desperately for someone, anyone who doesn't blunder across one of their red lines, to be the nominee. that other stuff, the stuff that would matter if a candidate is trying to sell themselves to the electorate, doesn't matter when it come to cain because the people telling pollsters they will vote cain haven't been sold on cain. they are just sold on not-romney. if someone else emerges as a plausible not-romney, they will have no problem ditching cain, just as they ditched bachmann for perry, and perry for cain.

the best thing herman cain has going for him, other than the fact that he is not mitt romney, is the fact that the voters are running out of time to do another ditching and there isn't time for the pool of alternatives to expand much more. (but wait! check out this last-minute entry. lookout, cain!)