At one time there were self-styled "ten percenters" among the black population. They believed that 90% of their kind were inferior human material but that they themselves were the exceptions. He won't admit to it, but one of these vainglorious souls is currently the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.
Tea partiers whose obsessive hatred of the president is partly grounded in racism are embracing Herman Cain. While that may appear incongruous, doing it likely makes them feel better about themselves and affords them protective coloration. And they aren't giving up anything by it. He is as contemptuous of blacks as they are and is equally bigoted across the board, refusing to consider naming a Muslim to his cabinet and telling those who are protesting the absence of jobs to quit bitching and go find work.
You have to wonder where Cain has been, whether he follows the news. He didn't know what a neoconservative was although that tribe got us into two wars recently. He comes up with gimmicks and stunts and jokes and is otherwise shallow and prone to winging it and to the offhand denial of facts when confronted with them.
I told you months ago that Sarah Palin would not run. I told you more recently that "a Marginal Melvin" like Rick Perry, who wants people to give up Social Security and Medicare in exhange for nothing, would not be the GOP nominee. I tell you now that Cain will suffer embarrassments and a fall from which he will not rise. The enthusiasm for him won't endure. Blackness and ignorance are a combination he can't surmount.
As for Mitt Romney, his best trait may be the plasticity and hypocrisy that make it hard to guess what he would actually do if elected, especially if he saw that he would be a one-termer regardless of what stance he took.
As the obvious compromise choice in a very flawed field, the smooth and plausible Romney should have been able to close the deal long since. Instead, we find Bachmann, then Perry, then Christie, and now Cain popping up as preferred alternatives to him. He is being denounced as unconservative by Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. And the anti-Mormon fanatics are after him openly now. In his swim to the fair shore he is dragging heavy anchors.
Newly in third place is Gingrich, who looks like no bargain and sets no souls afire. He told his inner circle months ago that the summer was for hanging on and the fall for breaking through. If Cain and Romney go down and additional entries don't take place, there will be no one other than Gingrich left who is conceivably electable. My suspicion is that most of the party faithful would rather settle for him than for Romney, if only because Newt is more viscerally and angrily conservative. What he says alternates between sensible (good for courting the general public) and embittered and unreasonable (good for courting the base).
On the other side of the fence, Occupy Wall Street is telling us what a Democratic candidate ought to be proposing answers to. Among other predictions, I have said that there will be such a candidate. I continue to think so, though the hour grows late and the money factor may be
daunting to those who consider a run.
Scientist Harry Braun, who once ran against John McCain for Congress, is in the race as a progressive Dem and is pushing a hydrogen economy and a Constitutional convention. You can see him on YouTube if interested. His Constitutional convention idea is terrible, as right-wingers would spend limitless amounts to get control of it and would put through pet abominations like a flat tax, a balanced budget requirement, and voting restrictions. Changes should be made by means of specific amendments that can lose if they must without pulling down the house that our fathers built.
Otherwise, Braun has more brains than braun. Elderly and scholarly-looking, he gets no recognition. Though articulate and impassioned, he lacks the implicit forcefulness and the air of invincible confidence that a viable outsider candidate must have.
One barn-burner of a speech can do the trick, I believe, provided the right kind of personality delivers it. For that, one goes on waiting in the hope that this year what can be also must be.
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