On Fox News Sunday, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain took off after his favorite target again. President Obama? Nope. Onerous tax rates? Uh-uh. ACORN? Not even close. Cain was too busy demagoguing Muslims, this time throwing in with protesters who want to stop construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Cain claims that he is driven by a desire to head off the imposition of Sharia law--that phantom menace with which some vanishingly small sliver of the conservative base is feverishly consumed. Cain is their most outspoken champion. (The Muslims in Murfreesboro have worshipped peacefully there for three decades, so whatever nefarious deeds he suspects them of perpetrating aren't much in evidence.)What's ugly, rather than merely odd, about Cain's fixation is how far he takes it. In March, Cain said he would not appoint a Muslim to his cabinet if elected president. He later modified that to say that Muslims should prove their loyalty to the U.S. constitution. Yesterday on Fox, host Chris Wallace asked him, "Aren't you willing to restrict people because of their religion?" Cain replied, "I'm willing to take a harder look at people who might be terrorists."
That's an answer fit for a drooling yokel. But Cain is nothing of the sort: he was CEO of Godfather's Pizza, chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Board, and director of Fortune 500 companies such as Whirlpool. He ought to be above such nonsense.
What's really perplexing about Cain's obsession with Muslims, though, is that it's a lousy political strategy---nobody is pro-Sharia law, so it doesn't differentiate him from the rest of the GOP field (or from any Democrat, for that matter). It's an issue that seems likely to deliver a fourth- or fifth-place finish in the Ames straw poll and an ignominious departure from the race.
Meanwhile, Cain has going for him what any half-sentient politician would recognize as political gold, something that would not only distinguish him from the GOP field but in the process point up the greatest weakness of the frontrunner, Mitt Romney: Cain was passionately against universal healthcare back in 1994, and took on its champion at the time, Bill Clinton, in a memorable confrontation that made national news.
Meanwhile, Cain has going for him what any half-sentient politician would recognize as political gold, something that would not only distinguish him from the GOP field but in the process point up the greatest weakness of the frontrunner, Mitt Romney: Cain was passionately against universal healthcare back in 1994, and took on its champion at the time, Bill Clinton, in a memorable confrontation that made national news.
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Source: The Atlantic
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