When former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain first announced his presidential campaign, I found it difficult to take him seriously.
He made no secret of his complete lack of political experience, he came across as woefully uninformed about major issues during debates and his 9-9-9 plan for tax code reform seemed ridiculous. I wrote him off as a member of the Donald Trump category of candidate, and focused my attention on “serious candidates” like Mitt Romney.
As time goes on, I’ve noticed the Republican Party has an uncanny ability to take people whom I originally find entertaining but harmless and turn them into weapons of political mass destruction (see also: Sarah Palin).
Continuing in that vein, Cain seems to be gaining momentum at an alarming rate. Beginning with his landslide win at the Florida straw poll in late September, numerous polls have shown Cain surging ahead, Romney and Perry trailing behind and the rest of the candidates left in the dust.
This worries me. On one hand, the Republican candidate field has been a rollercoaster with flash-in-the-pan candidates like Michele Bachman, so it’s likely that Cain’s popularity will die down in a few weeks. On the other hand, what if it doesn’t?
Cain’s main platform is his 9-9-9 tax plan: reforming the current tax code to consist of only a 9 percent personal tax rate, a 9 percent corporate income tax and a 9 percent federal sales tax. This plan seemed at first to be a catchy gimmick, but it’s ended up as the centerpiece for his platform, and it doesn’t hold much water. While it looks like a tax cut on the surface, this plan really just skews the tax burden towards the poorer end of the economic spectrum. The most important question, whether this plan can provide enough revenue, has yet to be answered conclusively.
Even Cain himself has been vague on the finer details of his plan, and has on several occasions changed elements of it when they’ve come under scrutiny. This is a shaky platform for a presidential campaign, and ultimately would never pass Congress anyway. This kind of radical ideology is a waste of time — time better spent focusing on achievable economic goals.
Cain’s foreign policy isn’t even worth talking about because he hasn’t put forth any ideas of value yet aside from vague support of Israel and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. His domestic policy is a different story. His desires to de-fund Planned Parenthood and reinstate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell are problematic, but unfortunately par for the course when it comes to the GOP.
He’s also repeatedly “joked” about electrifying the border fence to a lethal voltage and arming border guards with live ammunition. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find the summary execution of immigrants to be a laughing matter.
Equally as alarming is his track record of Islamophobia. He has supported efforts to ban the construction of mosques and has stated that he would be uncomfortable appointing Muslims to positions in his administration. He’s frequently cited a suspicion that Sharia law is slowly being slipped into the American government, and has expressed a desire to “take a harder look at people who might be terrorists,” as he told Fox News in September. This kind of bigotry coming from someone who is under consideration for the most powerful position in the nation is distressing at best.
In the end, though, the Pew Research Center’s recent survey says that more than 40 percent of Americans still can’t name any of the GOP presidential candidates and less than 10 percent could name Cain.
This seems to indicate that despite his apparent surge, it is just another flash in the pan and Americans aren’t paying much attention. Let’s hope that’s the case, so we can get back to focusing on actually viable candidates.
