Herman Cain Sets Up Presidential Exploratory Committee

[DToTheJ]

This pretty much confirms the worst kept secret in local talk radio - that he's considering a run for President next year. He announced as much on Fox News today.
http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/herman-cain-inches-closer-802360.html

By the way, I don't know which Fox News feed the person who wrote the article was watching, but there's nobody named Mario Cavuto at that network.

 

[RoddyFreeman]

Instead of setting up that exploratory committee, he should consult with me. For a small fee, I'd tell him that he doesn't have a chance.

 

[Talk_Dude]

Instead of setting up that exploratory committee, he should consult with me. For a small fee, I'd tell him that he doesn't have a chance.

Come on now, Cain is following in the best tradition of Pat Paulsen, Marvin Kitman, and many other entertainers seeking to use a fake Presidential bid to boost their popularity. I'd say Cain has an excellent chance of leveraging a pseudo-campaign to improve his name recognition as a talk show host.

 

[nightmanager]

Come on now, Cain is following in the best tradition of Pat Paulsen, Marvin Kitman, and many other entertainers seeking to use a fake Presidential bid to boost their popularity. I'd say Cain has an excellent chance of leveraging a pseudo-campaign to improve his name recognition as a talk show host.

Yes, but he's not a particularly good talk show host. Sure that's my opinion. Perhaps I have been spoiled by talkers who could incite passions about a huge range of topics (kids it's true: in the old days, talk radio used to do that instead of only doing politics, and a lot of the time the host didn't even believe a word they were saying) but guys and gals who do one topic every single day are like plain oatmeal.

 

[InSearchOfGear]

Instead of setting up that exploratory committee, he should consult with me. For a small fee, I'd tell him that he doesn't have a chance.

He would never get my vote, but conservatives love the dude. Don't count him out.

Would Boortz be his running mate? God help us....

 

[Talk_Dude]

Come on now, Cain is following in the best tradition of Pat Paulsen, Marvin Kitman, and many other entertainers seeking to use a fake Presidential bid to boost their popularity. I'd say Cain has an excellent chance of leveraging a pseudo-campaign to improve his name recognition as a talk show host.

Yes, but he's not a particularly good talk show host.

All the more reason why he needs stunts like this to boost his name recognition.

This is nothing new. Ralph Nader made himself a quite lucrative career by being a professional Presidential candidate in order to sell more books and get more bookings on the lecture circuit. And make no mistake, the professional lecture circuit pays really well.

Instead of setting up that exploratory committee, he should consult with me. For a small fee, I'd tell him that he doesn't have a chance.

He would never get my vote, but conservatives love the dude. Don't count him out.

Would Boortz be his running mate? God help us....

Conservatives who know of him love him, but he's still not that well known. This stunt is his shot at expanding his audience. He'll never win a single primary, but the book he'll write about his campaign experiences will sell well and make him a nice piece of change.

 

[secondchoice]

Instead of setting up that exploratory committee, he should consult with me. For a small fee, I'd tell him that he doesn't have a chance.

He is not running for President, it is Vice President. If he can split the minority vote even 10% the GOP wins. If the last republican VP candidate been Ms. Rice (former Secretary of State under Bush), the former Alaska Governor would still be in Alaska instead of IMHO: guaranteeing four more years of Obama!

 

[jabba17]

Instead of setting up that exploratory committee, he should consult with me. For a small fee, I'd tell him that he doesn't have a chance.

He is not running for President, it is Vice President. If he can split the minority vote even 10% the GOP wins. If the last republican VP candidate been Ms. Rice (former Secretary of State under Bush), the former Alaska Governor would still be in Alaska instead of IMHO: guaranteeing four more years of Obama!

Not to go too far OT politically (and my daughter is beside me with her technical advice to keep me on topic), IMO Sarah Palin will serve as the lightning arrester or ground system for the GOP. I don't think the GOP is foolish enough to actually put her on the ticket.

Another way to look at it: Google "designated decoy" and read the accompanying joke.

 

[Talk_Dude]

Instead of setting up that exploratory committee, he should consult with me. For a small fee, I'd tell him that he doesn't have a chance.

He is not running for President, it is Vice President. If he can split the minority vote even 10% the GOP wins. If the last republican VP candidate been Ms. Rice (former Secretary of State under Bush), the former Alaska Governor would still be in Alaska instead of IMHO: guaranteeing four more years of Obama!

There is no provision within the rules of the GOP to actually run for Vice-President. No convention delegate selected through the Primaries is bound to vote for any VP nominee. Which is all the more proof that Cain's running is a publicity stunt.

Does no one else see his actions as another radio personality publicity stunt? Is everyone gullible enough that they believe he's actually serious?

 

[JohnAllan]

Really good publicity stunt. First, cut your talk show down by an hour. Then pull the plug on the show so you can run. Then what? Hope they will hold the slot open for you? Have your fun. Say he won't run. Say he can't win. You can even say people don't know who he is. But you are wrong. More people know who he is than you think.

 

[Talk_Dude]

Really good publicity stunt. First, cut your talk show down by an hour. Then pull the plug on the show so you can run. Then what? Hope they will hold the slot open for you? Have your fun. Say he won't run. Say he can't win. You can even say people don't know who he is. But you are wrong. More people know who he is than you think.

I didn't say that it was a good stunt to boost his radio career. I only said it was a stunt. I also said that the stunt was to increase his worth on the lecture circuit and selling books. As nightmanager said, he's not a "he's not a particularly good talk show host". So, this stunt would enable him to leverage his minimal name recognition into even more name recognition, which will help him sell books.

As for how many people know him, you don't know how many people I think know him. I think that "a lot" of people know who he is. How's that for a precise quantity? Whatever his name recognition factor is, it is not up there with Gingrich, Palin, Huckabee, Romney, or any of the other names that have been floated around as a GOP candidate. I don't discount that he could be a dark horse that surprises everyone. But I was always taught to play the odds, or at least to be aware of them. If a skilled bookie was taking bets on who the GOP would run in 2012, Cain would be a major long-shot.

Are you even aware of how much money someone can make on the lecture circuit? Do you realize how lucrative a career that can be? Or how much your speaking fee can go up if you're a failed Presidential candidate? I mentioned his name before. Look at how much money Ralph Nader makes just for giving speeches.

 

[secondchoice]

Instead of setting up that exploratory committee, he should consult with me. For a small fee, I'd tell him that he doesn't have a chance.

He is not running for President, it is Vice President. If he can split the minority vote even 10% the GOP wins. If the last republican VP candidate been Ms. Rice (former Secretary of State under Bush), the former Alaska Governor would still be in Alaska instead of IMHO: guaranteeing four more years of Obama!

There is no provision within the rules of the GOP to actually run for Vice-President. No convention delegate selected through the Primaries is bound to vote for any VP nominee.

I did not mean directly for VP. A lot of times the VP is a former primaries opponent: Kennedy / Johnson, Reagan / Bush, to “balance” the ticket.

 

[Talk_Dude]

Instead of setting up that exploratory committee, he should consult with me. For a small fee, I'd tell him that he doesn't have a chance.

He is not running for President, it is Vice President. If he can split the minority vote even 10% the GOP wins. If the last republican VP candidate been Ms. Rice (former Secretary of State under Bush), the former Alaska Governor would still be in Alaska instead of IMHO: guaranteeing four more years of Obama!

There is no provision within the rules of the GOP to actually run for Vice-President. No convention delegate selected through the Primaries is bound to vote for any VP nominee.

I did not mean directly for VP. A lot of times the VP is a former primaries opponent: Kennedy / Johnson, Reagan / Bush, to “balance” the ticket.

The only times a primary opponent is picked as running mate is if no one candidate gets a majority of delegates from the primaries and a deal has to be brokered, or if the running mate has the ability to pull more votes in for the ticket. As a strategy, mounting a presidential bid in an attempt to win the VP slot is a really stupid thing to do. Nowadays, it's very rare for no clear winner to emerge from the primaries before the convention, so the need to broker a deal to avoid a convention floor fight is a thing of the past.

Understand, I'm not saying that it isn't possible that Cain would like to be VP and sees this as a way to get there. It's not an especially smart strategy. A much more effective strategy would be for him to actively support all GOP presidential candidates with the position "Anybody other than Obama", and then to make himself valuable to whoever gets the Presidential nomination as the VP candidate who can split the Black vote.

As a betting man, I'd put the odds that Cain is trying to become the VP candidate much lower than the odds that it's a publicity stunt. I'd rank publicity stunt as a 50/50 bet, trying to become VP as a 25/75 long shot, and a genuine and sincere bid to actually become President at 100 to 1 against.