“Rock You Like A Hurricane,” a 1984 hit by the once-forgotten German heavy-metal band Scorpions, has recently taken on a new life as the unofficial campaign song for Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. His most ardent supporters are fond of taking creative license with the song, replacing the word “hurricane” in the chorus with Cain’s name.
In Florida, a state painfully familiar with atmospheric disturbances, voters experienced a hurricane of an altogether different variety over the weekend. Cain’s shocking upset in that state’s straw poll has catapulted the former restaurant executive into the spotlight, while upending long-held assumptions about the extraordinarily fluid race for the GOP nomination. The Georgia native’s upset was buttressed by his strong showing at the Fox News-Google Republican debate last week and the miscues that have dogged the current front-runner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
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Chugging along quietly for months like “The Little Engine That Could”, Cain’s anemic national poll numbers belie a dedicated core of boosters and serious-minded economic policy proposals. With the national economy still in the doldrums, primary voters appear to be placing a premium on candidates with business acumen.
It should be noted that a straw poll victory is a far cry from becoming a full-fledged nominee, or even scoring a state primary win. Cain is still languishing in key early contest states that are integral to a candidate’s momentum.
Additionally, GOP straw polls are notoriously volatile — and even inaccurate — indicators of who emerges as the party’s putative standard-bearer. But even in light of these qualifiers, Cain’s primary win shouldn’t be dismissed. Indeed, the Florida upset holds key lessons for political watchers and GOP contenders alike.
The first lesson of Cain’s upset that today’s frontrunner can easily become tomorrow’s has-been. Remember Michele Bachmann? The Minnesota Congresswoman and Tea Party favorite stormed to the front of the pack with a plucky persona that helped cement an early contest win in Iowa. All of that seems like a lifetime ago, as the congresswoman has now become a victim of weak fundraising brought about by rapidly multiplying gaffes. Her ill-fated rhetorical crusade against the HPV vaccine Gardasil appears to have succeeded only in siphoning away most of her remaining momentum.
The second takeaway from Cain’s win is that the GOP field, using the metaphor of one politically savvy acquaintance, resembles a bowl of oatmeal: filling yet hardly satisfying. In a contest that arguably began way too early, voters are hungry for palatable alternatives.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has long been vulnerable for his lack of enduring convictions, and for having enacted a health care plan in his home state that bears a striking resemblance to President Obama’s.
Meanwhile, Gov. Perry record of job creation in Texas has been overshadowed by his poor debate showings and controversial positions that have come under withering assault from other Republicans. Columnist and Reagan administration alumna Peggy Noonan wrote last week that the Texas governor was making himself look like a “cheap, base-playing buffoon.”
Libertarian-leaning Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who won California’s GOP straw poll barely a week ago, is often lauded for his conservative economic principles. But his foreign policy views make him unpopular with GOP primary voters, as does his coterie of passionate yet borderline sycophantic supporters. Rep. Paul often resembles a deranged relative who escapes from the basement every four years, torturing the family just as they throw a fancy dinner party.
Lastly, Cain’s enduring popularity — and in addition to that of Congressmen Allen West and Tim Scott — should put an end to the argument that the Tea Party movement is motivated by racial animosity toward President Obama. Cain’s win over the weekend was a Karmic counterpoint to pointed remarks from Morgan Freeman, who in an interview called the Tea Party racist. The actor’s broadside disgraced a normally August reputation already sullied by his inamorata, and undermined his own powerful exhortation to “stop talking about race.”
The idea that Tea Party members are a step removed from the Ku Klux Klan is a shopworn and patently false meme. It deserves nothing less than a swift and brutal expulsion from political discourse.
Conventional political wisdom holds the GOP nomination is still Romney’s to lose, given longstanding GOP primary voters tendency to go with the nominee who is seen as the party’s heir apparent. But recall that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was once the undisputed front-runner for the Democratic nod, while a certain junior senator from Illinois was all but a footnote in the polls and the public’s imagination. Needless to say, we all know how that story ended.
All of which suggests the narrative of Herman Cain is still very much a work in progress. The path to the GOP nomination is a long, wending and treacherous road indeed, and strange things are often known to happen on the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Hermanator is far from being a lock for the presidential nod, but his win in Florida sends an unmistakable message that the outcome of the Republican nomination is far from assured. No one, least of all his competitors who are currently running a fade route, should take Herman Cain lightly.
