Since Jack Krier’s favorite empty headed right wing tart, Sarah Palin, announced that she wasn’t running for president, he’s been in a bit of a scramble. To find a candidate that’s just as vacuous in their rhetoric, will allow him to get away with veiled racism, and ultimately, to never ever be able to land the nomination. He can continue to prattle on during Obama’s reelection about how this one person could’ve saved the world from Muslim based, Sharia Law-ed, socialism. Jack Krier’s pick: Herman Cain. Mr. Krier even takes inspiration from The American Spectator's Aaron Goldstein's Nine Reasons Why Republicans Ought to Nominate Herman Cain. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Krier may in fact not be writing much of anything these days, just pulling a Mad Libs style Dave Barry writing ethic. I’ve only been reading Mr. Krier for the past year, and I’m finding a LOT of e-mail forwards disguised as editorials or other articles being gussied up and pasted in his opinion section. But naturally I take great inspiration from Mr. Krier’s idiocy so I have retorts to these bullets points. The bullet points in bold are from The American Spectator article, then followed by me ramblings.
1. Herman Cain has no sense of entitlement. You need a lot of ego to think you can run for president. To think that you can be that guy for four years. Especially in this day and age when it’s pretty much available to the highest bidder and not the most qualified. Herman Cain wasn’t born in to privilege and seized moments throughout his life? That sounds like Obama, and wouldn’t’ you know that this was one of those things that made him NOT electable to Mr. Krier and his ilk.
2. Herman Cain worked for Burger King. Oh, like 89% of people who worked some form of restaurant job? Herman Cain was as a CEO (quick reminder before the other bullet points) “assigned to manage some of the least successful (read ghetto neighborhood) Burger King restaurants and turned them in to the most profitable”. Here again is this failed idea that a business and the federal government are so similar that they can be run the same way. Do you now how Herman Cain may have turned some of those Burger King’s around? By firing most of the staff, and only paying minimum wage, with little to no raises, no ability for promotion, and the eventual epic turn around of employees that do stay, you too can turn around a struggling business!
3. Herman Cain has never held elected office. The article foments that never holding elected office is a good thing, yet again the antithesis to the entire argument against Obama. “He doesn’t know how it works, so he will fail!” Yet, this whole “outsider” bent that every politician from the past few decades have used to get elected in to office, is here again! For some reason this sentence is thrown in there too: “…Cain thinks outside the box, as evidence by his success in the business world…” Again, this is written by someone who has to have no idea how business’s run themselves, and how this isn’t even applicable to running a government. Never mind the fact that the president in only in charge of one branch of government. The Executive branch does not make laws or pass budgets, much to the chagrin of the right-wing.
4. Herman Cain is a mathematician. As evidenced by his idiotic at best, cynical class warfare at worst, 9-9-9 tax plan. That in the plainest of terms would bring about revenue on the backs of the poor and old. If Herman Cain thinks this is going to win him over with the minority crowd his is mistaken. However, I don’t think Herman Cain is looking for the minority vote anyways. This also kind of similar to the “Obama is a constitutional lawyer/professor” argument that proffered the mistaken idea that Obama would not just be an extension of W.’s with policy and the like. Clearly, having degrees in the mathematics has little to do with executive economic competency.
5. Herman Cain was a CEO. It's vaguely mentioned in the Burger King bullet point, but not focused on which is why this bullet point is so odd. I get the feeling The American Spectator article was really stretching for 9 things worth noting about Herman Cain. These next few points are kind of one in the same. So "managing" Burger King’s and being a CEO of another company is different…how? Well on this level “he learned first-handed (sic), how the business worlds works. He knows that the federal government is a hindrance when it comes to private enterprise creating jobs…[he would] relax some of the stringent government rules that have tied the hand of business…” Because, as we all know, deregulation is the key to our past economic glory days!
6. Herman Cain is the adult in the room. Ahh, this new nugget of idiotic deliciousness. Since Herman Cain is black, he could take Obama to task without being called racist? This doesn’t make any sense and should probably be included in the next bullet point. But nope, it’s here. How does that make Herman Cain the adult in the room? Time and again this “so and so is the adult in the room” talking point got a lot of mileage during the deficit “crisis” over the summer. In an Obama/Cain debate, as prophesied in this article, Obama would take Herman Cain to task for not even being remotely realistic, and would break done his idiotic 9-9-9 plan for the class crushing bullshit it is. Herman Cain only has charisma to stand on, and while it would be a lively debate, of that there is no doubt, it would be a shallow pool of rhetoric for Herman Cain (See Palin/Biden vice presidential debate). Obama would have to be on his best behavior so the corporate media wouldn’t think he was patronizing Herman Cain and actually taking him seriously.
7. Liberal charges of racism would look really, really stupid. For decades, “the liberals” have been calling conservatives racist? No, how shocking! Maybe because Conservatives pander to these people and have been since Nixon? The article speculates this tired notion that if republican nominate another black person to a spotlight position that that culls the racism? Does anyone remember Michael Steele’s appointment as RNC Head right after Obama got elected? Yup, that sure didn’t look suspicious or anything, Or the fact that you can count on ONE hand the number of minorities representing the Republicans. But it’s about the person's character, not the color of their skin right (wink wink)? No, nominating a black man doesn’t mean you stopped being racist, just as voting a ½ black man president did not make America suddenly post racial and wipe away decades of history.
8. Character Content. Again, they should’ve maybe just wrote paragraphs instead of spreading a short sentence about Herman Cain to 9 bullet points. It reads like one on of those staid business profiles on a corporations website. Herman Cain is a man “who carries himself with a sense of humor, dignity, modesty, responsibility and gratitude towards his country,” Wow, this guy has it all! I don’t think I know anyone who does this on a daily basis. Do you fair reader? What I don’t get is the gratitude part. Gratitude for allowing him to become Herman Cain? To bilk clueless right-wingers out of money by pushing an catchy jingle in the guise of tax reform? Not to mention Koch/Americans for Prosperity financial backing. The last part of this bullet pint tickled me as well: “He doesn’t know everything, but he is a quick study.” Like most of this article, it doesn’t even scratch the surface on who Herman Cain is. This honestly does read like a repurposed “This is why you should elect Obama president” twisted around with Herman Cain for the right-wing crowd. Hell, I’d even go far as to say this covers a majority of people running for president at any one time. But the “he doesn’t know everything, but he is a quick study” is a bit unnerving because in a recent Bloomberg Magazine interview he prefaced with a piece of rhetoric with “I don’t have the facts to back this up,”. Is this something you want your president saying to you during a state of the union address “I don’t have the facts to back this up, but Iran is a dick and we must invade them.”? If you do, you’re probably a right-wing idiot.
9. 9-9-9. Finally! We got to 9! Let’s dovetail that in to this 9-9-9 plan that cannot stand up to real world application. The American Spectator article is correct that would represent the biggest change to our tax system. But it comes off the backs of the middle and lower class, it railroads the progressive nature of our tax code. It gets rid of the payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare and dismisses that FICA is a federal tax! According to Bloomberg News it would‘ve generated $200 billion less in 2010 than the governments $2.2 trillion in collections for that year. The article supports 9-9-9 because it would be significant first step in reducing the size of government. Not fixing our debt “crisis”, doing anything to stem the tide of more wasteful spending, or even beginning to bring in more revenue to pay for the stuff we’ve already demarcated. No, this is plain and simply to shrink the government, right in line with the current right-wing ideology. It doesn’t have to make sense, or withstand a litmus test of feasibility, it just has to do what the great Grover Norquist wishes.
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