New Republic
Why There’s No Way Cain Will Survive His Abortion Gaffe
* _
Ed Kilgore
_
(http://www.tnr.com/article/the-permanent-campaign/96544/cain-abortion-iowa-gop-2012-tax-plan#)
Ed Kilgore
_Card_ (http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-stump/96275/the-persecution-card)
* October 22, 2011
When the entire candidate field opened fire on Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax
proposal in Tuesday night’s Republican debate in Las Vegas, you could almost
hear the sound of hundreds of exhaled breaths in elite GOP circles. Cain’s
improbable rise in national and early-state polls would now end, they
probably figured, as GOP voters discovered the pizza man’s signature policy
proposal wasn’t terribly well thought out. But it’s likely that Cain could
have
overcome the criticisms surrounding his tax proposal. What he will struggle
to live down, on the other hand, are his recent comments on abortion.
The mounting criticisms of Cain’s 9-9-9 plan were troublesome, but far from
fatal for the candidate. To begin, it’s unclear whether rank-and-file
conservatives attracted to Cain in the first place will accept second-hand
analysis from the “liberal” Tax Policy Center against the authority of Herman’
s own web page and his humble Ohio economic advisors. Moreover, tax plans
can be endlessly fiddled with, as Cain showed yesterday in his Detroit
speech laying out a complicated “opportunity zone” exception to 9-9-9, which
will address claims that it is highly regressive. And the heat that’s now on
Cain for promoting a controversial set of tax reforms could soon be
transferred to Rick Perry, who will unveil his own “flat tax” proposal next
week.
(http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-new-republic-for-ipad/id454525980?mt=8) But
debate over Cain’s vulnerability on 9-9-9 might not matter as much
now, because the candidate has subsequently committed an unforced error of
much greater magnitude—and on an issue where tolerance of heresy in the GOP
ranks has shrunk to the disappearing point: abortion. At a time when the veto
power of the Right-to-Life movement over national Republican tickets has
become plain as day (just ask John McCain, whose top two vice-presidential
choices had to be dropped in favor of Sarah Palin), Cain somehow managed to
flub answers to simple, familiar questions on abortion policy in an
_interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan_
(http://www.mediaite.com/tv/herman-cain-tells-piers-morgan-that-he-is-anti-abortion-yet-pro-choice/)
.
It was surprising enough that Cain seemed to back rape and incest
exceptions to a hypothetical abortion ban, since he said he _didn’t as
recently as
two days ago_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVnT9ZfAt78) (indeed, his
hard-core anti-choice position was fundamental to his one prior candidacy, his
_unsuccessful 2004 Senate bid_
(http://whitehouse2012.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/a-look-back-at-herman-cain-and-his-2004-u-s-senate-primary-election/)
in Georgia against a rare pro-choice Republican, Johnny Isakson). But of
far greater concern to the Right-to-Life lobby is the logic of Cain’s
rambling answer, which seems to concede that abortion is generally a matter for
families, not government, to decide. The highly influential proprietor of _The
Iowa Republican_ (http://theiowarepublican.com/) , Craig Robinson, made
this clear in a _post_
(http://theiowarepublican.com/2011/do-we-really-know-who-herman-cain-is/) that
opened up on Cain with both barrels:
Basically, Cain’s position as a candidate is that of pro-abortion
activists. The government has no right to tell a woman what she can or cannot
do
with her body. The difference is that a pro-life individual believes that
child inside the womb is a life with inherent rights and that the mother
should not be allowed to infringe it’s right to life [sic].
Cain will likely clarify his position, but how many times and on how many
different subjects will he be allowed to ask for a “do-over” before he
loses trust and credibility with voters?
_Robinson’s piece_
(http://theiowarepublican.com/2011/do-we-really-know-who-herman-cain-is/)
—entitled “Do We Really Know Who Herman Cain Is?”—is
quite certainly ricocheting around Iowa political circles. And Cain, whose
front-runner status in Iowa is already vulnerable to his lack of organization
and personal attention to the state, could not have picked a worse subject
on which to stumble. The Iowa GOP is a place where right-to-lifers walk
tall, and where “social issues” have not lost any of their old punch. Rick
Santorum, who has _already attacked_
(http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2011/10/20/rick-santorum-herman-cain-just-waffled-on-abortion/)
Cain for his gaffe, is undoubtedly seeing this as a God-given opening to
poach on Cain’s intensely conservative voter base, as will Michele
Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and the man whom so many Cain voters were supporting
a
month ago, Rick Perry.
Pro-lifers in Iowa and around the country will quickly be reminded that
Cain joined the already-suspect Mitt Romney and the presumed RINO Jon Huntsman
as the only candidates who _refused to sign_
(http://www.sba-list.org/2012pledge) the Susan B. Anthony List’s “Pro-Life
Presidential Leadership
Pledge,” which promises all-out war on abortion supporters and providers,
earlier this year. And like Robinson, agents of Cain’s rivals will use this
incident to raise basic questions about the Tea Party favorite’s ideological
reliability on other issues, including taxes. Cain is lucky that this weekend
’s _Des Moines banquet_ (http://ffciowa.com/) for Ralph Reed’s Faith and
Freedom Coalition will involve candidate speeches rather than a full-on
debate, though he may well draw fire over abortion from his rivals anyway.
Herman is a smooth operator with the soul of a born salesman, but this time
his silver tongue may have undone him. Tax plans can be written or
unwritten. For people who think legalized abortion represents an ongoing
American
Holocaust, however, the correct position is always the same, and any
wrinkle or nuance that complicates “No!” is just going to get the candidate in
deep trouble.
--
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