September 26, 2011 06:21 PM UTC

(Partly) Explaining The Herman Cain Thing

• 6 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The Washington Post’s Perry Bacon reports from Florida:

The overwhelming victory by businessman and longshot candidate Herman Cain in a straw poll here Saturday was a sign that the latest person to try to capture the fancy of party activists, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, is–at least for now–struggling to do so….[m]any of the more than 2,600 delegates at the Florida event said their vote for Cain was a way to register their frustration with all the GOP candidates, particularly Perry, who they felt gave a dismal performance at Thursday’s debate.

But in interviews, the party activists, who came from around the state to see the candidates, said they were unlikely to vote in Florida’s primary next year for the underfunded Cain, who they don’t think can win the general election. Backing Cain was effectively a “no confidence” vote for the entire field.

Brian Donnelly, a Republican from Broward County, opted for Cain, but said he seemed “less electable,” than Perry, who he described as a “tongue-tied Texan.” Donnelly said he did not even consider backing the “father of socialized medicine,” criticizing former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for the health care law adopted in the Bay State four years ago that became a model for the law Obama signed last year…

We were reminded soon afterward of last month’s Western Conservative Summit in Denver, from which the Colorado Statesman’s Ernest Luning reported:

If Georgia businessman Herman Cain wins the presidency next year, he might mark his stunning straw poll win at a gathering of Colorado conservatives as a turning point in his campaign. And even if the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO doesn’t ascend to the highest office in the land, he’ll likely still savor the memory of his reception in Denver last weekend, when nearly 1,000 cheering audience members leapt to their feet with sustained applause after his speech and then proceeded to vote for the Republican in overwhelming numbers…

We’ve discussed at length the GOP’s broadly-perceived weak field of presidential candidates, in stark contrast to the equally common assumption that President Barack Obama is ripe to be beaten by a Republican challenger in November of 2012. Expected saviors like Gov. Rick Perry are falling flat, and “frontrunner” Mitt Romney is only marginally able to take advantage of the situation due to widespread antipathy toward him in the Republican base.

So unserious firebrand Herman Cain’s continued popularity among the faithful can be partly explained–conservatives are dissatisfied. They want an unblemished ideological conservative (not Romney) who can speak intelligently in a debate (not Perry). It’s safe to say that if the protest votes were going to, for example, Jon Huntsman, there would be a very different story being written. But at least for now, it points to the “Tea Party” hard right still strong enough to disrupt the process–and Cain’s strength reflects their unwillingness to compromise.

Because folks, you’ve heard the stuff that comes out of Herman Cain’s mouth, right? One thing that seems fairly certain, Cain is not holding the door for a moderate “savior.”