Herman Cain: Fake Candidate

There is a reason Herman Cain doesn't have policy advisers to help strengthen his grasp of foreign and domestic issues. Cain has never ran a real presidential campaign. When I say real, I mean actually campaigning with the intention of becoming President of the United States of America. A major giveaway was Cain's meeting with serial fake presidential candidate Donald Trump. Mitt Romney met Trump but intentionally dodged cameras and reporters. Cain bragged about meeting Trump on Twitter.

Meeting James Baker or Henry Kissinger was once a way for a Republican candidate to prove his bona fides. Donald Trump is the current litmus test. My, how the Republican Party has matured. Romney avoided the media because he understands that the vast majority of Americans consider Trump a cartoonish buffoon. Cain doesn't have these consideration because like Trump he craves attention. Which is what Cain's fake candidacy is all about.

Mark Benjamin of Swampland tried to find out who is running Cain's state campaign in New Hampshire, Florida and South Carolina. Republican operatives in those states told Benjamin they have no idea.

“There is no sense of a tangible organization that you can point to,” says Rich Killion, an uncommitted GOP strategist in New Hampshire, who’s unsure of the location of Cain’s Granite State base of operations, or even if there is one. “If you said, ‘Rich, tell me who is running the effort here?’ I could not even give you that person.” Matt Murphy, Cain’s original state director, resigned in June.

“There is good will towards him, but there is almost no organization to speak of,” says Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “If there is a local group who wanted to invite him to speak, it is unclear whom to call. I gather that they are adding staff and ramping up, but the primary is in two and a half months.”

Besides some tea party activists, Cain has no campaign offices or staff in New Hampshire. Does this sound like someone who wants to be president?

We see the same thing in Florida.

A prominent Republican operative in Florida says the Cain campaign is similarly invisible in his state. “If somebody called here and asked to volunteer for Cain, I would not know whom to talk to,” he says. Cain won a major Florida straw poll in late September, but he’s been largely absent ever since. “He came and worked the crowd. He got a few state reps. to endorse him” and then he left, the operative says. “It boggles the mind. I don’t know any of the usual suspects who have been called, asked or much less hired. There is no grassroots. The guys in key counties, none of them are getting talked to.”

The fact that the tea party would embrace Cain and Sarah Palin says much about how seriously they take policy. One thing is certain is that Cain and Palin will make a shitload of money off of the Christian Right conservatives that enjoy dressing up in Revolutionary War costumes.

Update: I did an internet search and couldn't find any Cain campaign offices in Florida. I did find that his last visit to Florida, on October 5th, was to sell his book.

On Wednesday, questions centered around Cain’s two stops in Florida — which were part of a book tour, not campaign events.

Cain hawked $25 copies of This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House to about 300 people at The Villages in Central Florida and then to another 300 people at a Barnes & Noble in St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg Times reporter Aaron Sharockman confronted Cain with the accusations that he isn't serious about his campaign. Cain gave his usual response about keeping his agenda secret. Cain usually does that when he doesn't want to answer the question.

“They don’t know my schedule. They don’t know my strategy,” said Cain, 65. “The perception that we’re not campaigning is ridiculous.”

What is "ridiculous" is people taking Herman Cain seriously.