Politics
Herman Cain continues to defy the odds
Retired pizza executive Herman Cain (pictured), continued to defy the odds Sunday, beating out his fellow Republican contenders in yet another presidential poll, this one from Iowa, the lead-off state for next year’s election balloting.
Cain nipped former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney 23 percent to 22 percent in the race for the Republican nomination, according to a Des Moines Register poll of voters planning to take part in the 2012 Iowa Caucus.
The former CEO of Godfather Pizza has surged 13 percentage points since a poll by the newspaper conducted in late June, despite spending little time in the state and taking just fifth place in an August 13 Iowa straw poll vote.
Pundits give Cain little chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination, especially after seeing a parade of Republicans claim the frontrunner mantle only to see their fortunes fade.
And they point out that were Cain to win the nomination, he would be the first candidate in modern presidential history to do so without having first held elective office.
Still, the plain-speaking African American businessman and minister has been a phenomenon on the campaign trail, livening up an otherwise lackluster Republican race, and spawning copy cat tax reform proposals modeled after his catchy but controversial “9-9-9” plan.
Many experts say Cain’s popularity in Iowa, as well as in other recent national polls that also showed him to have taken the lead, is a product of voter dissatisfaction with Romney.
Romney, like Cain a successful businessman before entering politics, has been tipped by many experts to be the eventual Republican nominee, but so far he has failed to excite conservative voters and has been criticized for his apparent readiness to tailor his views when it is politically expedient.
“What I find interesting is that Mitt Romney continues to have 75 percent, 80 percent of his party looking somewhere else,” said David Plouffe, President Barack Obama top reelection campaign strategist on Sunday.
“I make two points about him. One is, he has no core,” Plouffe told the NBC television program “Meet the Press,” rattling off a long list of issues where Romney has changed his stated views from abortion to climate change.
“You get the sense with Mitt Romney that, you know, if he thought it was good to say the sky was green and the grass was blue, to win an election, he’d say it.”
Observers meanwhile question whether Cain could suffer the same fate as Texas Governor Rick Perry, who soared to the top of polls after entering the race in August, but who since has plummeted like a lead balloon.
Perry in Sunday’s poll received just seven percent support, putting him in a tie with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for fifth place.
The telephone survey of 400 Republicans likely to attend next year’s Iowa caucus vote was conducted between October 23 to 26, and has a margin of error is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
Copyright © 2011 AFP.