I suppose they will accept Perry/Cain, but I really get the feeling that the plan is for Romney to out middle-of-the road Obama and Cain to split the black vote with him.
I know I am being cynical and possibly even racist, but I just get the feeling that Cain is not running for the top spot any more. And I get the feeling that the Republican leadership feels that any chipping away of Obama’s black support will be enough to get the White House for them.
I am not sure Cain is running seriously at all as opposed to trying to get people to buy his book. Either way, there’s no master strategy from the RNC. The candidates are in it for themselves. Romney still seems to be the man to beat. Even if you’re a hardcore Republican, you would have to be pretty deluded to think Cain is going to take away a significant portion of the black vote from Obama. The McCain campaign tried something like that when they nominated Palin - they were hoping they could appeal to Clinton supporters who were upset she didn’t win. It didn’t work at all because it turns out that few women, perhaps bordering on none, will vote for a candidate who disagrees with them on fundamental issues just because she’s a woman. The same goes for black voters and a black candidate. It’s a bad strategy because it involves treating people like idiots to get them to vote for you. There are plenty of idiots out there, but nobody wants to be treated like an idiot. Even if you cast all of that aside, why are these voters - the ones who vote based on race alone - going to vote against Obama, the black guy who is president, and vote for Romney so a black guy can be vice president?
In the last election cycle, the GOP nominee chose someone to appeal to the fire-breathing right, someone who hurt the ticket because she appeared inexperienced, incompetent, and a loose cannon. That was true even though she was a lifelong politician and sitting governor. Cain has never been elected to political office and so cannot even make that claim to ability. That’s correct: Herman Cain does not rise to the level of Sarah Palin. Let the horror of that sentence in its implications for the ticket take root in your brain until it blossoms in all its Audrey-like glory.
Herman Cain has exactly as much chance of being named the vice-presidential nominee as you or I.
How many black votes do Republicans think Cain, running as the Republican vice presidential candidate, will draw away from Obama, running as the incumbent Democratic President? Even setting aside party affiliation and incumbency, any black voters who are voting along racial lines are probably going to vote for the ticket that has the black candidate on top.
What makes anyone think Cain will split the black vote. He can get almost all the Repub blacks, but it is silly to think he would make inroads into the Dem/Black group.
Yea, “splitting the black vote” didn’t exactly work against Obama’s race for the Senate in 2004. Obama took 92% of African American vote to Keynes 8%.
Obama gets most of the black vote because he’s a Democrat, not because he’s black.
Heck, a Romney/Cain ticket might cost the Republicans votes. They might lose more votes from redneck racists who’ll refuse to vote for any black candidate than they’d gain from crossover black votes.
I think the GOP elite sees Obama weakening among blacks and even if Cain does not appreciably pull voters from that block, he may cause Obama to take time away from putting out other fires to address that group to ensure his winning that group.
And as for the redneck core not accepting Cain, come on, they would vote for Satan himself to defeat Obama.
Both. The blacks are very energized by Obama.
It would be a pro choice ticket for the Repubs. That would not be allowed.
They may see it, but whether it actually exists is another thing altogether. People close to John McCain saw Obama as vulnerable among women voters, remember. It’s hard to measure approval ratings within demographic groups, but black voters seem to still support Obama very strongly. Why they would vote for Cain (on either spot on the ticket) has yet to be explained.
It’s possible that some Republicans may be assuming the reverse though, because they really do think that black people are voting based on skin tone alone, and do not look any deeper into the candidates’ actual policies. In this, they may be seriously underestimating the discernement of the black voting public.
I’m not sure who “some Republicans” would be. I guess some random shmoe registered with the GOP might think that, but I assume that anyone actually involved in GOP electoral strategy is familiar with the fact that African Americans vote overwhelming for Dems regardless of the race of the candidates. In anycase, I’m sure Romney and Perry and their advisors are aware of that fact (well, Romney anyways, I’m sure someone will point it out to Perry if he starts considering Cain as a VP pick).
You should probably look at how blacks have historically voted before assuming Obama will have a problem “winning that group”.
Republican strategists, I am sure, have no illusions about pulling any substantial number of black votes away from the Democratic party in the 2012 election.
This is actually the second time I’ve seen this notion put forth lately, and it hasn’t gotten any less absurd. There’s no sense to it at all except to put the likely and realistic candidate (Romney) together with the latest savior of the right/flavor of the week (Cain) together on a ticket to create the republican dream ticket. The only thing it actually does is prove exactly how seriously the republicans are taking this election.
By that I mean that they aren’t taking it seriously at all. If this is their best ticket, the republicans are even more intellectually bereft than I had previously suspected.
Cain would add to the campaign what Palin did to McCain’s. People would be wondering what the hell Romney was thinking.
Romney looks like the kind of president we have been having for a long time. They have led us down a nasty unprosperous road . I think many are thinking"here we go again’.
Cain is an unqualified nutcase.
I’m kinda confused on the ongoing assertion that Romney will pick someone from the far right as a running mate. Why would he? The only thing a far right candidate could do is energize the base. The right wing base is already sufficiently energized by the fact they want Obama out. He’s running against Obama. A far right loon isn’t going to take any votes from Obama.
He needs help gaining middle class voters that are unhappy with the way things have been under Obama. A centrist with a blue collar appeal, I expect someone Christian. I’d put my early money on Huckabee but I expect a Republican governor and senator to be brought up out of national obscurity to the take the job, someone that the public hasn’t had time to form strong opinions on.
Normally I’d agree. But the Tea Party movement is a new factor. It’s raised expectations among a large segment of the electorate. Many of them want ideological purity not compromise and incremental change. As far as they’re concerned, there’s no difference between a RINO and a Democrat so why pick one over the other. (And cynically, some Tea Partiers secretly want Obama to win. They know a second Obama term will extend the outrage in their base and keep them in power longer.)
A couple of months ago Romney said he wanted someone like Dick Cheney as his VP. If that meant anything other than pandering to the universally despised, then it means we’re likely to see a conservative pitbull as his VP candidate.
He really didn’t. Cheney’s book had just come out and someone asked a gotcha question about Cheney as VP. Of course Romney said that he would pick Cheney or someone like him. Means nothing.
Romney will most likely pick someone who hasn’t been discredited by being a failed presidential candidate. I expect someone who dropped out early in the race or who hasn’t been in it at all.