Cain Leads Perry In Texas, But He Has Other Problems

Pizza magnate and presidential candidate Herman Cain has been riding high recently. As the teabagger "flavor-of-the-month", he has been beating most other candidates in the polls -- and even beats, ties, or comes a close second to establishment favorite Mitt Romney in all recent national and state polls. Now a new in-state Texas poll, done by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune, shows that Cain leads in the state, edging home-state boy Rick Perry and trouncing Mitt Romney by 18 points.

The UT/TT Poll surveyed 800 registered voters between October 19th and 26th, and had a margin of error of 3.46 points (a 4.93 point margin of error for Republicans only). Here is what the poll showed:


Herman Cain...............27%
Rick Perry...............26%
Ron Paul...............12%
Mitt Romney...............9%
Newt Gingrich...............8%
Michele Bachmann...............2%
Gary Johnson...............1%
Jon Huntsman...............1%
Rick Santorum...............1%
Don't know...............11%

This poll shows a few things clearly. First, the campaigns of Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are dead. These two campaigns have been on life-support for a while now, but after this result they might as well pull the plug. For Bachmann and/or Santorum to have a chance they would have to do very well among the teabagger crowd, and getting only 1-2% in a teabagger-rich state like Texas is the death knell for those campaigns. And also, the campaigns of Gary Johnson and Jon Huntsman, just like everywhere else, still show no signs of life.

Second, Mitt Romney has virtually no appeal for the teabagger base of the Republican Party. He has tried for several months to move far to the right in an effort to appeal to the teabaggers, but they just don't trust him. Finishing fourth with only 9% support is not just bad -- it is truly pathetic. Political pundits are still predicting Romney will be the eventual nominee, but unless he can start getting a decent hunk of the teabagger vote that just ain't gonna happen.

Third, Herman Cain still enjoys strong support from the teabagger base of the party. beating Rick Perry, who is a champion of the fundamentalist far-right, in his own back yard is nothing to be sneered at. The only question now is whether Cain can keep that support now that is he finally being exposed to the harsh glare of the national media.

Until recently, Herman Cain was a candidate most Republican voters didn't know much about. But since springing to the top of the GOP presidential field, both the voters and the media are paying closer attention to him and trying to figure out just what he is all about. Voters have recently been exposed to Cain's ridiculous 9-9-9 tax plan (which would punish workers and give huge tax breaks to the rich) and his total ignorance of foreign affairs, but now a charge has been leveled that may be more serious character-wise -- a charge of sexual harassment.

It has been revealed that while Cain was the head of the National Restaurant Association (NRA), at least two women had accused him of inappropriate and sexually harrassing behavior. They said he had directed aggressive and sexually suggestive actions toward them. The NRA must have taken the charges seriously, because they made sizeable payoffs to both women so they would keep quiet and go away.

 Cain is now saying that he was the victim of false accusations, and that he was not even aware that the payoffs had been made. That's pretty hard to believe. How could the head of an organization not know that payoffs were made for such serious charges, especially since the charges were made against him? He wasn't much of an executive if he really didn't know.

How will these charges play to the teabaggers who are giving Cain most (or all) of his support? Will they view it as misogyny and a basic character flaw one would not want in a president? Or will they just see it as a rich man's executive privilege or the expected actions of a "good old boy"? It could go either way -- after all, most of the teabaggers are fundamentalists whose religion places women in second-class status anyway.

Can Cain survive the bright light of media inspection? We'll just have to wait and see.