Herman Cain lays it out, and destroys with facts

[Adam]

Truth wins: The facts that destroy the allegations made against me in 2011

I refuse to leave my reputation under a dark cloud that has no relation to the truth.

On September 24, 2011, I won the Florida Republican Presidency 5 Straw Poll by a large margin over the next closest candidate. It was an upset victory and helped propel me to the position of frontrunner in the national polls for the Republican presidential nomination. My messages of common sense solutions and tax code replacement were clearly resonating with the American people.

What happened next brought my campaign to an abrupt and unexpected end – a series of scurrilous accusations, sensationalized by an onslaught of media coverage. All this made it impossible for me to continue without subjecting my family – particularly my wife of 45 years – to more pain than any decent man could ask his family to endure.

The accusations were false. I have never sexually harassed a woman and I did not have an affair with Ginger White. Until now, I have never offered the facts that expose these accusations as lies, although I have been in possession of them. It is now time to do so, not only because the false accusations have received renewed attention with the publication of a book that discusses them, but more importantly because I refuse to live my life, pursue my radio and professional career or do anything else that God has left for me to do in this world with a dark cloud attached to my reputation that is not consistent with the truth.

Read the whole thing. As much as anything else, it's an absolutely damning indictment of the media and their feeding frenzy in 2011. The claims were dubious at best at the time, and the media automatically believed this woman and automatically disbelieved Cain. It would have taken only a little bit of effort on the part of the media to bother checking into Ginger White in order to discover that she had a long track record of outright lying about all sorts of things, including a libel suit that was pending at the time.

That having been said, the Cain campaign, and in particular Cain himself, caved on this entirely too quickly. He needed to get out in front of this, above it, and he needed to talk past the media to show that White was a lying, manipulative bitch. I'm sure Cain didn't want to do that to a friend, but nonetheless, that's what needed to be done. He needed to simply strip her credibility away, and the same with the other two who claimed sexual harassment. As Cain notes here, they had zero credibility, and it would have been easily demonstrated: one was found to be full of shit by the EEOC, and the other literally was five hundred miles away from Cain at the time that she claimed Cain did these things to her; Cain literally had an air-tight alibi, and he should have used it.



How different things would be now, if they had been different then....

[Billy Jingo]

Cain's problem wasn't the bimbo eruptions. As Clinton showed, that could be dealt with (I am not making any statement about whether they are real or not because I don't give a shit).

But I agree that the Media eats this stuff up. Look at Weiner. He just took pictures of his dong.

[Adam]

Cain's problem wasn't the bimbo eruptions. As Clinton showed, that could be dealt with (I am not making any statement about whether they are real or not because I don't give a shit).

But I agree that the Media eats this stuff up. Look at Weiner. He just took pictures of his dong.

That's what I was trying to point out in my second paragraph, admittedly not very artfully. This could have been dealt with, and indeed Cain would have come out smelling like a rose had he done so, but his campaign folded up their tent instead. Wrong move. Had he taken off the gloves and shown all three of these women to be the liars that they clearly are, as he has done in this piece, then he would have been transformed from "unknown candidate with a troubled past" to "victim of a vicious media smear campaign."

[Novaheart]

Herman Cain said stupid stuff.

[Norm dePlume]

"Got all this stuff twirlin' around in my head"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...poLN_blog.html

[Adam]

"Got all this stuff twirlin' around in my head"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...poLN_blog.html

Because Obama's foreign policy has been sooooo much better....

[phillygirl]

The time it would take to get the truth out, it would have been too late for the real campaigning. I am glad he left the race, as his wife didn't deserve that kind of scrutiny, day in and day out. It's no wonder that our selections are so limited. Who wants to put up with that nonsense?

[Billy Jingo]

The time it would take to get the truth out, it would have been too late for the real campaigning. I am glad he left the race, as his wife didn't deserve that kind of scrutiny, day in and day out. It's no wonder that our selections are so limited. Who wants to put up with that nonsense?

They won't be limited in 2016. Except maybe for Democrats. The Republican field will be full. And not just with commerce candidates (those who are just there to push their brand) either. Honest to God candidates willing to articulate a coherent political philosophy and the general framework of how to put that philosophy into action.

[Billy Jingo]

They won't be limited in 2016. Except maybe for Democrats. The Republican field will be full. And not just with commerce candidates (those who are just there to push their brand) either. Honest to God candidates willing to articulate a coherent political philosophy and the general framework of how to put that philosophy into action.

Boy, was I wrong.