It is completely understandable why Republicans are increasingly enthusiastic about Herman Cain. First and foremost, he isn't Mitt Romney. The Republican Party elite has been trying to force the mercurial Mormon down the throats of the party's grass roots for two election cycles, but despite his elegant coiffure and vast money-raising capacity, the average Republican voter wants nothing to do with the man. They quite rightly regard him as less trustworthy and more slippery than Bill Clinton. Second, he isn't Rick Perry. The Texas governor not only sends up red flags in every conservative who sees him as the third Bush, but in addition to his deceitful and authoritarian gubernatorial record, he has proven to be an inept politician on the national stage. Republicans spent 12 years being repeatedly embarrassed by fake Texas conservatives who couldn't manage to avoid tripping over their own tongues, and they have little wish to repeat the experience.
Third, he isn't scary. Republicans find Ron Paul to be scary. The Texas congressman simply thinks too far outside the ideological box for most Republicans. Despite the fact that foreign wars and fiscal responsibility are mutually contradictory and that a central bank and monetary stability are not simultaneously possible are irrelevant; Republicans want a candidate who will promise to give them all four. Republicans also find Michele Bachmann to be scary, but to be fair, she is an alarmingly Lovecraftian figure with crazy eyes and sufficient foster spawn to rival Shub-Niggurath, the Goat with a Thousand Young.
Fourth and finally: He is black. The Republican love for black candidates cannot be exaggerated. Republicans enjoy voting for black candidates more than most members of the New Black Panther Party do. Most Republicans have spent their entire adult lives being unfairly accused of racism due to their party identification and so they positively leap at the chance to prove their anti-racialist credentials when given half a chance. They regard it – quite naively – as a "get out of racism" free card. And they are genuinely excited about the thought of trumping the Democrat's first half-black, half-American president with the first all-black, all-American one.
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So far, so good. But should Republicans get excited about Herman Cain and nominate him in defiance of the wishes of the party elite? The facts would tend to suggest otherwise.
The primary problem with Herman Cain is that it is assured he will follow in the footsteps of Alan Greenspan, George Bush '43, Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama in supporting the interests of the large financial institutions against the interests of the American people. Cain isn't merely a Wall Street puppet like Bush and Obama, he is a bankster in his own right, having been the chairman of one of the 12 Federal Reserve banks during the credit boom that laid the foundation for the present economic crisis.
Cain's banksterism isn't merely an artifact of his employment history, either. A few months ago, he came out publicly against an external audit of the Federal Reserve even after stories of its illegal foreign bailouts had been broken by Bloomberg News. His incoherent explanation for this was that because the Fed had internally audited itself, neither Congress nor the American people had any need to know what the central bank was doing. More recently, he tried to defend the government-dependent parasites of Wall Street against the activists protesting the financial institutions, declaring: "Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks if you don't have a job and you're not rich; blame yourself. It is not someone's fault if they succeeded. It is someone's fault if they failed. "
Notice that Cain claims it isn't someone's fault if they succeeded. So whose fault is it? If it's not Wall Street and the big banks, it's obviously the government's fault. Herman Cain's idea of success is to take huge gambles, then convince the government to bail you out every time you lose a bet. He isn't a conservative or a free-market capitalist; he is a big government casino corporatist.
In his attack on the anti-Wall Street activists, Cain said he believed the demonstrations were intended to "distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration." But Republicans need to understand that Cain intends to continue the failed central policy of the Obama administration, which is the policy of doing whatever Wall Street and the big banks demand. Unless complete submission to Wall Street is the heart's desire of Republican voters in 2012, Herman Cain should not be the Republican nominee, since that will be the guiding policy of any future Cain administration.
