Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and the Laugh Factor
Opinion

Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and the Laugh Factor

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Monday Catch-up
Are Cain and Perry Becoming Laughingstocks?

If the worst thing that can happen to a politician is to be ridiculed, then the GOP presidential campaigns of Herman Cain and Rick Perry are in danger of being yukked off the national stage.
 
Certainly one of the handicaps Republicans have to live with – especially in connecting with young voters – is that the GOP is not the party of laughs. There’s nobody out there savaging Democrats with quite the same gusto and hilarity. Herman Cain’s travails have become rich fodder for late-night comics, especially Jon Stewart, and even Imus, whose morning show is on the Fox Business channel, frequently roasts the Herminator.

Now YouTube videos of a wild and crazy Rick Perry speech in New Hampshire (portions of which were reminiscent of some of George W. Bush’s goofy attempts at humor) have gone viral. And on Saturday Night Live, Bill Haider did an impersonation of a drunk and foppish Perry that will keep the guffawing at the Texas governor’s New Hampshire performance going. More serious is that if you Google “Rick Perry drunk,” you come up with 1,700 hits.

Cain at first accused the Perry campaign of being behind revelations by Politico that women who accused him of sexual harassment when he headed the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s had essentially been paid to go away.

It’s not so odd for one candidate to charge another with dirty tricks, but in this case, both Cain and Perry have linked to the oil-rich Koch brothers, Charles and David. So it all seems a little internecine.

At the “Defending the American Dream Summit” in Washington sponsored by Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a group co-founded by the brothers, The New York Times quoted Cain as saying: “This may be a breaking news announcement. I am the Koch brothers’ brother from another mother. Yes! I’m their brother from another mother, and proud of it.”

A protest outside the DC Convention Center, where the summit was being held Friday evening, at one point turned violent and trapped participants inside. As Forbes.com reported: “Occupiers, many of whom had their faces obscured by masks or bandanas, began banging on the transparent glass walls and doors of the building, demanding entrance, then attempting to gain access by pushing their way in when guests came or went. …Within an hour, they’d surrounded the building, trapping AFP guests inside, eventually causing at least two injuries to elderly attendees who tried to leave and were shoved down a set of stairs.”

On ABC’s This Week, Christiane Amanpour asked a political panel if Cain could weather the charges of sexual harassment. “Can Herman Cain survive it and fix it?”

“He can fix it, and he still won't survive. That is, I don't think his is a viable presidential campaign,” said columnist George Will. (In one huge gaffe last week, Cain suggested that China did not possess nuclear weapons.)

Amanpour also asked about the Perry video.

“I like that side of him, the sort of swaggering Texan. I can't get enough of that,” said Newsweek columnist Niall Ferguson. “The problem is, all the Texans I know can't stand him. And that seems like a pretty bad sign to me, because if he really was that guy that we saw, swaggering, they would love him.”

“[The] charitable explanation is that he was drunk,” said Ariana Huffington of the Huffington Post..

“That's always a good sign of a politician,” replied Ferguson. “Think of Churchill.”

After a discussion of the Perry video on Face the Nation, Republican consultant Liz Cheney scolded Bob Schieffer for focusing on such campaign distractions. “…With all due respect, the American people are out there afraid. They're afraid that the economy is going off a cliff. They're afraid that this President wants higher taxes and more spending and bigger government…that's what we ought to be talking about,” said Cheney.

Amazingly, Huffington, on the other end of the political spectrum, made a similar point on This Week. “…This is more a problem with our media culture. I mean, Herman Cain is the latest Balloon Boy. You know, everybody's obsessed with it. It's wall-to-wall cable coverage. But even the three networks, it's like 50 stories on Herman Cain in the first three days. And if you really ask commentators off the air whether they really think that it's probable that Herman Cain even before these allegations would be president…they would tell you no. So why are we obsessing about it?” she said.

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