Much of the planning is secret from the public and watchdog organizations alike, and undertaken by fierce partisans with an end-justifies-the-means outlook in dealing with the media, elections, regulatory officials, Congress and the courts.
To be sure,
the brothers' rare public comments and their many surrogates paint a rosy
future if they can implement their plans for massive deregulation, lowered
taxes for corporations and the rich in Cain's 9-9-9 plan. They seek also tightened
voter eligibility rules, big cuts in government safety net and
similar spending, plus privatization of Social Security.
They justify their stealth mode on the grounds that liberals, unions, Democrats and the mainstream media have corrupted public discourse and civic procedures in ways that badly hurt the nation. I have close friends and relatives who are part of this movement, and so am aware of the arguments. A contrary view comes from progressive economic Dean Baker, who wrote, Secret of the Flat Tax: Middle Class Pays More So Rich Pay Less.
That has the appearance of a traditional, open policy debate. But it's the hidden network of influence-peddlers that help make this a consumer issue as time-pressured consumers and voters must sort through layers of secrecy and funding.
Cain, like many serious and not-so-serious candidates, has authored a campaign book. But the overall impression remains of a pitch-man for the Koch agenda of free-market policies. That would explain Cain's nearly one-dimensional focus on the Koch-friendly 9-9-9 tax plan and his campaign's initial dependence on a variety of Koch funding and alliances.
It explains also his campaign's lack of an organizational presence in the key states of Iowa and New Hampshire -- and his oft-bungled and at times nasty responses to the recent sex harassment charges. True believers admire a warrior with a gift for bravery, bravado and bon mots in combat. Think of movie heroes, including James Bond and Batman. But Cain's response to his sex harassment allegations necessarily reflects his character, instincts and capabilities.
The tabloid Politico gave the Cain campaign 10 days advance notice on its sex allegations before publishing on Oct. 30, Herman Cain accused by two women of inappropriate behavior, stemming from Cain's 1990s leadership of the National Restaurant Association. Here's what happened next, which I witnessed Oct. 31 on assignment at the National Press Club in Cain's first major response to the story:
That morning, the candidate largely avoided in-depth questions about the Politico story in his first appearances at the American Enterprise Institute and on Fox News. Cain then attended a club reception before his luncheon talk. Even with his speech on his mind, he cheerfully greeted everyone at the reception and posed for photos. I was there because the editor for the Wire, the Club's electronic newsletter, had asked me to cover. In my grip-and-grin moment, I asked Cain to suggest a headline of my forthcoming story. "Common sense!" was his jovial response with a big smile.
A few minutes later, I was seated at a front row table next to Cain's muscular and friendly security guard. Cain delivered a polished campaign talk to the packed room that contained more than 40 film crews and vigorously denied during Q&A the misconduct allegations. My column, Cain denies sexual harassment, touts tax plan, sings spiritual at club luncheon, sought to combine in a brief news item his upbeat campaign message with the news of the day regarding his rebuttal.
He delivered
his defense in a forceful, confident fashion, and discrepancies in his account
weren't readily apparent until follow-up interviews over the next few days.
For one thing, he said at first he didn't remember details, but soon afterward began describing details. Also, his first interviews characterized the charges as having been found baseless, but he has declined to specify who found them baseless. Also, we learned from Politico's advance warning to him about its forthcoming story that his campaign failed to create a coherent rebuttal strategy. Instead he and his team have oscillated between blaming Democrats and fellow Republicans, and maligning his female accusers.
For reasons of space, I won't
attempt here to try to prove either the merit of the allegations against Cain,
or their lack of merit, or why the charges arose at this juncture of the
campaign.
Sitting also at the head table was Cain Campaign Manager Mark Block, who also has strong ties to AFP and the Wisconsin election of Gov. Scott Walker. Beyond that, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and New York Times have reported that the Cain campaign accepted in a potentially improper manner tens of thousands of dollars in goods and services from Prosperity USA, a tax-exempt organization founded by Block.
The Associated
Press and New
Yorker have helped document these ties and the lavish spending by the Kochs
to foster AFP, the Cain campaign, and the Tea Party movement. At the AFP
convention, the only other presidential contender speaking besides Cain was
Mitt Romney. The "journalist" speakers included the notorious attack
provocateur James O'Keefe, a young man who is most famous for using doctored
videos to destroy the already embattled community organizing group ACORN.
A Koch embrace, in effect, of O'Keefe-style journalism is not an aberration. O'Keefe defender Andrew Breitbart was on the program also.
Earlier in the week, Cain operative Dick Morris appeared on Fox News as a Sean Hannity guest to unleash another vicious attack on one of the candidate's accusers. Without disclosing his financial conflict, Morris gleefully predicted with no evidence that she would soon appear naked in Playboy. Given the Morris history of being fired from the White House staff in 1996 for consorting with a prostitute in the Jefferson Hotel, his continued national prominence as a moralist/pundit illustrates the hypocrisy of his many employers.
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