Scrutiny takes toll on Cain
MINNEAPOLIS—Scrutiny is starting to take its toll on Herman Cain, who held a press conference here Saturday night to push back on intensifying criticisms that have come with his rise in the polls.The Republican presidential candidate sought to clarify his stance on hiring Muslims to work in the federal government, defended his decision not to sign an anti-abortion pledge and pushed back on reports that he does not sufficiently support gun rights.
He started a tense half-hour press conference by announcing that he wanted to get a few things off his chest. Then, in response to a question from a conservative blogger, he lambasted supporters of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) for criticizing his service at the Federal Reserve.
“I’m driving my staff crazy, but I be the candidate, OK?” he said. “There’s a lot of good stuff you can learn on the Internet, and there’s a lot of garbage out there … we won’t allow disinformation to kill this campaign.”
The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, who has never won an election, said he is “on the rise” — breaking into double digits in some polls — because his “in your face” message resonates. But Saturday night’s back-and-forth might have only made matters worse for the long-shot, who some think peaked at the South Carolina debate last month. His post-speech presser likely overshadowed his well-received address to conservative activists at the RightOnline Conference.
Cain created a distinction between being uncomfortable with appointing a Muslim and actually doing it. He said his earlier comments merely expressed unease, and that he did not say it was out of the question.
“So I’m not going to play nicey-nice and say that I’m not going to take extra precautions in order to be able to make sure that we can do our job,” he said in his opening remarks.
But asked to clarify if that meant Muslims would go through the same job application process as everyone else, he said yes. When a “Talking Points Memo” reporter pressed him, he snapped back: “If you’re trying to make me lose my cool, you are almost succeeding. I never said I would use any ‘special precautions,’” he said. “I never used those words. Those words were used by somebody from the Internet, OK?”
Then Cain apologized to the reporter, Evan McMorris-Santoro, for getting worked up.
“It probably wasn’t politically correct to raise my voice,” he said. “I’m not going to be a punching bag, OK? But you can imagine that I’ve been asked that same question 18,000 times.”
Cain then tackled the Second Amendment. He complained that critics describe his proposal to allow states to pass laws as a recipe for back-door gun control.
“I don’t believe states should restrict access to guns, but what if a state wants to pass background checks? What if a state wants to pass carry-and-conceal? That’s what I’m talking about,” he said.
Abortion was the third hot-button issue to be brought up. Cain, along with Mitt Romney, has refused to sign a pledge circulated by the Susan B. Anthony List. Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum each signed, vowing to nominate judges and appoint executive branch officials who are opposed to abortion. The pledge also commits signers to push legislation to end all taxpayer funding of abortion and to sign a law to “protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.”
Cain explained that he could not pledge to “advance” legislation as president because that’s the job of the Congress.
“I don’t know about other folks, but I read, and I had problems with one word in there,” he said. “But people went nuts … They didn’t consider that small request or point of clarification good enough so they threw me under the bus.”
He stressed that he opposes all abortion rights, from conception to delivery.
The first question he took from a group of two dozen bloggers and reporters dealt with criticisms from Paul supporters of Cain’s work on the advisory board for the Federal Reserve’s Kansas City branch during the 1990s.
“Representative Paul wrote a book called ‘End the Fed.’ I believe we can fix the Fed,” Cain said. “Because when I ask the Ron Paul people, ‘what would you replace it with?’ they don’t have an answer.”
Cain said he is falsely accused of opposing an audit of the central bank.
“As far as auditing the Fed, in the vernacular of my grandfather, I does not care,” he said, quickly slipping into the third person. “But what Herman Cain has said is, ‘It’s not going to be one of my top issues … If members of Congress were to get together and bring me legislation to audit the Fed, I’d sign it. But I don’t have a problem with it. Now, that being said, you don’t need the president to sign a bill to audit the Fed. Representative Paul sits on a committee that already has that authority!”
On foreign affairs, he backed off previous statements that suggested he won’t form a more detailed policy plan until he becomes president. He clarified that he would have almost three months between winning the election in November 2012 and becoming commander-in-chief in January 2013.
“We will be putting together plans in that transition period so as soon as I become sworn in, I’m not going to be starting from ground zero and then I’ll have a better idea,” he said. “That being said, I am talking to some ex-military and ex-intelligence people right now. But I can’t tell you who they are, you know, because I don’t want to blow their cover.”
Cain acknowledged that his communications director, Ellen Carmichael, didn’t know in advance that he planned to go on such a totally-off-message riff. Cain was straddling a chair that he had flipped around. He took off his suit coat and crossed his arms.
“I want to clear the air, alright,” he said. “See, traditional campaigns tell candidates to stay away from sensitive subjects. No! I’m not your typical candidate. I go right into the belly of the beast if somebody has misrepresented something that I have said.”
© 2011 Capitol News Company, LLC
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