The Republican race

Rising Cain

Herman Cain is the latest challenger to Mitt Romney’s position as front-runner

EVERY few weeks, the race for the Republican presidential nomination acquires a new leader, or at least a new challenger to Mitt Romney, the steadiest force in the field. First there was Donald Trump, a businessman-cum-impresario with a fascinating hairdo. In July Michele Bachmann, a shrill congresswoman, had a moment of ascendancy. August and September saw the rocket-like rise and fall of Rick Perry, the governor of Texas. At the beginning of this month all eyes were on Chris Christie, the wavering governor of New Jersey, who ultimately declined to run. The latest excitement, however, is perhaps the most unexpected of all: Herman Cain, a former pizza mogul and talk-show host.

A few polls, including our own Economist/YouGov one, show Mr Cain leading Mr Romney, with roughly 30% support. In most, though, he is nipping at Mr Romney’s heels. All this is a startling change from a month ago, when he rarely made it into double digits (see chart).

Mr Cain has an impressive and uplifting resume. Despite coming from a poor black family, he earned degrees in mathematics and computing, and worked briefly for the navy as a rocket scientist. He had successful stints as a manager at Coca-Cola and Pillsbury, a food group, before leading a buy-out of one of its subsidiaries, Godfather’s Pizza. He served on, and ultimately chaired, the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. More recently, he survived a severe case of colon cancer.

Until recently Mr Cain’s political career had been less triumphant. He first got involved in politics in opposition to Bill Clinton’s proposed health-care reforms in the 1990s. He has never held elective office, although he ran for president in 2000 and for the Senate, from Georgia, in 2004. A conservative pressure group he started, the Hermanator’s Intelligent Thinkers Movement (HITM—get it?), has not had much of an impact.

Nonetheless, Mr Cain is a stirring speaker. He got the conservative faithful much more fired up at a recent conference in Washington than Mr Romney, or indeed any of the other candidates. He has an appealingly simple economic platform, of massive tax cuts, complete with a catchy slogan: 9-9-9 (the tax rates he would like to introduce on personal and corporate income and sales). In the latest debate among the candidates, admittedly on economic issues, he managed to advertise this scheme in almost every answer.

The 9-9-9 plan has won Mr Cain lots of attention, but also presents his rivals with their most obvious line of attack. One of them, Jon Huntsman, quipped that he mistook it for the price of a pizza. Mrs Bachmann points out that it would institute a national sales tax, which would come on top of state sales taxes, giving the federal government a whole new revenue stream that would inevitably be increased. Other critics dismiss as far-fetched Mr Cain’s claim that his dramatically lower rates would unleash such rapid growth that they would bring in as much revenue as the current tax code. Another common complaint is that Mr Cain’s plan would be hugely regressive, slashing effective tax rates for the richest while actually raising them for the poor, who would pay 9% on their food bills.

Mr Cain shrugs off all these criticisms as misguided, with little explanation. It does not help that the only economic adviser he has named so far is a certain Rich Lowrie, a lowly Ohio banker without a degree in economics. The voters, Mr Cain insists, like his plan—although they may get misgivings the more they hear about it.

Moreover, there is not much more to Mr Cain’s campaign beyond the 9-9-9 plan. He admits to being a neophyte on foreign policy, and joked with an interviewer about all the reporters who will try to catch him out by asking him to name the president of “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan” and other “small insignificant states”. He often gives the impression of being out of his depth, and admits, quite winningly, that he has a lot to learn. He has only a small staff, and interrupted his campaign for a book tour, which took him away from the early-primary states less than three months before voting begins.

It is perhaps telling that Mr Romney did not attack Mr Cain in the most recent debate when offered the opportunity to question another candidate. As the fortunes of his various potential challengers have waxed and waned, Mr Romney has maintained a statesmanlike indifference. He has released a 59-point economic plan, named dozens of prominent advisers on economics and foreign policy, and attracted endless endorsements from party grandees—most recently Mr Christie.

Mr Romney’s support, at just over 20% in most polls, remains quite feeble. By this stage in most Republican campaigns, a clear front-runner has normally established himself (Democrats are more fickle). Many Republicans appear to mistrust Mr Romney’s conservative bona fides, thanks to the relatively liberal policies he pursued as governor of Massachusetts—chief among them a health-care scheme that bears a strong resemblance to Barack Obama’s despised reforms. Some voters are put off by Mr Romney’s Mormonism. A pastor with close ties to Mr Perry denounced the religion as a cult recently, to only half-hearted criticism from the other candidates.

If conservatives were to rally around a single alternative candidate, they could quite probably supplant Mr Romney with one of their own. But Mr Perry, who has lots of money and a robust campaign machine, will not surrender that niche willingly to Mr Cain. Even in a state like Iowa, where roughly half of Republican caucus-goers identify themselves as born-again Christians, Mr Romney is leading in some polls because the right-wing vote is so fractured.

The more challengers who threaten Mr Romney’s lead, only to fall back again, the more inevitable his ultimate victory begins to appear. The most daunting potential late entrants to the race, Mr Christie and Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and tea-party darling, have now officially demurred. Most importantly, Mr Romney can plausibly make the case that as a less polarising figure than most of his rivals, he is best placed to defeat Barack Obama. Even the most doctrinaire primary voters ought to be able to see the sense in that argument.

from the print edition | United States

Źródło: economist.com Oct.15th 2011
Artykuł dodano w następujących kategoriach: USA.