Herman Cain

On Wednesday's Early Show, CBS's Chris Wragge complimented GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain for his recent win in the Florida straw poll, but then wasted little time in throwing cold water on the future of his campaign. Wragge, along with co-anchor Erica Hill, asked why Cain would "stick with it," and wondered if the Republican could compete if Gov. Chris Christie entered the race.

The two anchors began the segment by heralding the former Godfather's Pizza CEO's "surprise over the weekend" and how he "shook up the GOP race on Saturday, winning the Florida straw poll with more votes than Rick Perry and Mitt Romney combined." Wragge then congratulated Cain and asked, "Someone like Sarah Palin says late last night that you're the flavor of the week. How do you respond to something like that?"

Herman Cain's victory in Saturday's GOP straw poll in Florida didn't become headline news at the Associated Press until after the candidate's Monday morning "Today Show" interview. Earlier today at NewsBusters, Kyle Drennen noted how "Today's" Ann Curry tried to frame the result as some kind of "protest vote."

Having delayed dedicating a story to Cain's victory for roughly 36 hours, the headline in AP's unbylined story this morning was: "GOP's Cain says win in Fla. straw poll not a fluke." In other words, it didn't become news at the wire service until someone else in the media put the candidate on the defensive about the significance of his win, thus avoiding giving him any moment of unvarnished recognition for the good old-fashioned butt-kicking he delivered (37% Cain, 15% Perry, 14% Romney, 11% Santorum, all others under 10%). How convenient.

On Monday's Early Show, CBS's Jim Axelrod pressed Gov. Mitch Daniels to anything derogatory about the Republican presidential field, leaving the Indiana politician little time to say anything about his new book. Axelrod also devoted a significant amount of time during the interview to the question of whether New Jersey Governor Chris Christie would get into the presidential race.

The substitute anchor led the segment with the issue of the recent Florida straw poll, which businessman Herman Cain won: "Cain didn't just win in Florida this weekend. He had more votes than both Governor Romney and Governor Perry combined. What does that tell you about the state of the Republican field?" After his guest gave an initial answer, Axelrod followed up by asking, "When you see what's happening with the inability for a single candidate to, sort of, get some traction, does it make you rethink your decision, at all, to get out of the race?"

Good Morning America's John Hendren on Sunday dismissed the victory of Herman Cain in the Florida straw poll, condescendingly asserting that the "big winner is nobody." The ABC reporter made sure to repeatedly mention the business of the Republican presidential candidate: "That's right. The man who brought you Godfather's Pizza at 37 percent."

Hendren arrogantly explained, "What's notable about the Florida straw poll is less who won than who lost...The week's big winner in the Republican primary is nobody." It's odd for ABC to dismiss the straw poll's actual winner as a "nobody." But if the candidate hasn't broken through, perhaps the hosts at GMA should actually consider having him on as a guest. (This has yet to happen in 2011.)

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Update [11:15 ET]: Full transcript added.

In an interview with Herman Cain on Monday's NBC "Today," co-host Ann Curry declared: "The Washington Post is reporting that many of the delegates voted for you – are saying that they voted for you as a protest vote to express no confidence in the Republican field. Do you want to weigh in on this?" [Audio available here]

Cain fired back at the report: "I think that is absolutely false. I talked to a lot of delegates when I was in Florida all last week. It's not a protest vote. Look, the message coming out of that victory was quite simple. First of all, the voice of the people is more powerful than the voice of the media....the people are listening to the message and not simply, with all due respect, just to the media."

View video after the jump

As NewsBusters reported Friday, Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman during an interview on CNN said members of the Tea Party are racists willing to do whatever they can to "get this black man" out of the White House.

After his win in Saturday's Florida straw poll, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain responded to Freeman during an interview with Fox News's Neil Cavuto (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Live from the Iowa State Fair, CNN's Don Lemon asked Republican presidential nominee Herman Cain if he could win the Iowa vote for the Republican nomination and for president, given that Cain belongs to a "mostly-white party" and is campaigning in a "mostly-white state."

Lemon had said the two had a "passionate conversation" prior to going on air, where he asked Cain "do you think in a party – in a mostly-white party in a mostly-white state, did you really stand a chance, not only of a nomination, of becoming President?"

[Video below the break.]

Editor's Note: What follows is NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell's thoughts on who won, who lost, and who should just pack it all in following last night's Republican presidential debate in Ames, Iowa.

Gingrich: The winner. Wasn't even close. Showed why Obama would pee in his pants having to debate this man.

Santorum: Also a winner. Showed most passion, and took on and beat up other candidates. But was it enough to keep him alive?

Chris Matthews as usual had four guests on the weekly syndicated program bearing his name.

When he asked them which of the current Republican candidates could end up being a great president, nobody chose to identify a single one (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Monday's Today show, substitute host Savannah Guthrie got snippy with GOP presidential contender Herman Cain as she played up his lack of time in government as a negative and demanded of the former head of the Godfather's pizza chain: "If you were still a CEO, if you were in business, would you hire someone for a key role who had no experience whatsoever in business?"

For his part, Cain jabbed back that his experience as a businessman, away from the Beltway, was exactly what government needed now.

(video after the jump)

Yesterday, Tim Graham at NewsBusters did an excellent job of addressing a key aspect of a report submitted by Associated Press reporter Errin Haines, who is African-American, of the presidential campaign of Herman Cain, who is also African-American. Haines questioned "voters' ability to look past his skin color and perceive him as a serious candidate."

Herman Cain attended the We The People Convention in Columbus, Ohio this past weekend. He arrived late Friday afternoon, and was greeted by several hundred attendees who were still there after the day's breakout presentations had ended (total attendance was reportedly "about 1,000", according to Joe Hallett at the Columbus Dispatch; I heard a number of 1,100 from a person affiliated with the event). For Errin Haines's benefit, I can attest that every one there looked past the man's skin color and perceives him to be a serious candidate. Cain also was the featured speaker at the event's concluding dinner on Saturday night.

There are three other aspects of Haines's report which I found quite offensive, and I will air them after the jump.

AP reporter Errin Haines couldn't possibly think that being black makes you an un-serious presidential candidate. She's black. But that was the mysterious echo in her (mostly positive) story on GOP contender Herman Cain. Perhaps she meant that a black Republican can't possibly be anything more than a token or a gimmick? Her third paragraph:

Already losing some of his cachet to tea party favorite Michele Bachmann, Cain, the lone African-American GOP candidate, is trying to win over a party that hasn't had a black nominee. Sidestepping race as an issue in his campaign may have helped him gain momentum in recent weeks, but whether he can turn vigor into votes will depend largely on voters' ability to look past his skin color and perceive him as a serious candidate.

As NewsBusters previously reported, Jon Stewart earlier this month did a segment on "The Daily Show" wherein he impersonated Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain using an Amos and Andy voice.

While campaigning in Iowa Wednesday, Cain said of this incident, "He wants to mock me because I happen to be a black conservative" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, Jon Stewart earlier this month did a segment on "The Daily Show" wherein he impersonated Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain using an Amos and Andy voice.

On Tuesday's "Imus in the Morning," Fox News's Juan Williams said that if Sean Hannity had done that, "He'd be out there barking with the dogs after they threw him out" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Wednesday's All Things Considered, NPR's Ari Shapiro let The Daily Show's John Oliver and The Washington Post's Dana Milbank cast aspersions on some of the declared 2012 Republican presidential candidates and their surrogates. Oliver mocked the talking points of a Ron Paul spokesman as "pointless" and "meaningless," while Milbank derided the candidacy of Herman Cain.

Host Melissa Block introduced Shapiro's report about the White House correspondent's first visit to a post-presidential debate spin room, and gave a hint of its overall mocking tone: "The spin room might be a good name for an amusement park ride or part of a fun house. That makes it a perfect fit for a presidential campaign, which can get a bit wacky even in these early days."

In a June 16 story for the Politico, Molly Ball surveyed the existing GOP presidential field and essentially buried them all as pathetic losers who couldn't even carry their home states. The article headlined: "The GOP's Unfavorite Son Primary" detailed how current candidates Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and even undeclared ones like Rick Perry and Sarah Palin would have trouble winning statewide races.

Yes, you read that right. According to Ball, Perry could struggle to beat Obama in Texas and Palin could fall to the President in Alaska.

Ball began her story this way:

HBO's Bill Maher on Friday took a racist swipe at Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

During the New Rules segment of "Real Time," the host said pretending that he was speaking to Newt Gingrich, "Let me put your unpopularity in context for you - you're a Republican and you're polling behind a black guy" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It would be unfair to call Jon Stewart a racist but when he mocked GOP presidential contender Herman Cain as essentially an illiterate, on Thursday's show, it has to be asked wouldn't Stewart and his cronies at The Daily Show have satirized any sort of conservative talk show host, like a Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, as a bigot if they had joked that President Barack Obama didn't "like to read?"

After playing a clip of Cain promising to limit congressional bills to just three pages, Stewart attempted to impersonate Cain and then threw up a mock billboard that read: "HERMAN CAIN 2012 - I DON'T LIKE TO READ"

The following excerpt was aired on the June 9 edition of Comedy Central's The Daily Show:

On Friday morning, the Daily Kos blogger with the byline Seneca Doane tried to have fun with the mass defection away from Newt Gingrich, satirically offering Newt his services in defeating the other GOP candidates. He was especially vicious with Herman Cain: "I'll admit it right up front -- Cain scares me.  I don't mean as an opponent; I mean as a human being." Cain, he says is the perfect racist:

Cain poses a problem, though.  Cain can get away with saying more racist things than you can, because white (i.e., almost all) Republicans think that because he's Black, he can't be racist, even if he's trotting out every vicious anti-Black stereotype in the book to the delight of white onlookers.  (And he will.  You should let people know that he'll be your choice for HUD Secretary.  The more pissed off he gets at it and denies that he'd take the job, the better.  You'll tell him that you know that he wants a job and will give it his all.)

The mainstream media have largely ignored or casually dismissed businessman and radio host Herman Cain's bid for the 2012 Republican nomination.

Not so Time's Alex Altman, who has a generally decent piece today on the magazine's Swampland blog:

Congrats to NB's Tim Graham for writing up a post ("Are Time and Mark Halperin Racist? Herman Cain Omitted Twice in GOP Oddsmaking") linked by Matt Drudge (headlined "Time Magazine Ignores Black Candidate in Race") pointing to an egregious and arguably deliberate omission of Herman Cain's name in Mark Halperin's coverage of the race for the GOP presidential nomination at Time Magazine. Tim noted that Halperin has handicapped the race twice (May 23 and June 6), but has left Cain out each time.

Tim pointed out that Cain's omission is hard to forgive, given that Cain, whose background includes extensive business turnaround experience, a stint as Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve in Kansas City, and a number of years as President of the National Restaurant Association, as well as more current involvements with talk radio and Tea Party activism, "participated in the first presidential debate on May 5 to high praise and formally announced on May 21."

There are two additional items which especially make Halperin's second exclusion of Cain appear virtually smoking-gun deliberate:

Twice in the last two weeks has Time magazine devoted a page to Mark Halperin's oddsmaking on who will be the Republican nominee -- the May 23 issue (page 35) and the June 6 issue (page 16). Twice, there's been no mention of Herman Cain. The GOP cast of contenders is lily-white. This seems odd, since Cain participated in the first presidential debate on May 5 to high praise and formally announced on May 21. Are Time and Halperin racists? They can't say they're unaware that Cain is running.

They can't say that Cain is too much of a long shot. In the first set of odds, Halperin put Michele Bachmann at 1,000-to-1. (The best odds in order were to Romney, Huckabee, Daniels, Pawlenty, Huntsman, Gingrich, and Palin, second to last at 60 to 1.) In the second set, Huckabee and Daniels were removed from the list, and Santorum (at 500 to 1) and Ron Paul (at 2,000 to 1) were added. Bachmann was still at 1,000 to 1.  Halperin also added "Mystery Candidate" -- but named those (Rick Perry, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, and Jeb Bush.)

Sarah Palin is "running against the press, mocking them," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell argued on the June 2 edition of "Hannity," pointing to the media's consternation over the former Alaska governor's bus tour.

"She's having a field day running against them" and "knows exactly what she's doing," the Media Research Center founder added, pointing to polls showing Americans largely distrust liberal media outlets like the broadcast networks.

Gallup released a new poll this morning asking who GOP primary voters support sans Huckabee, Trump, and Daniels. And it turns out...the race for the GOP nomination is still very undecided, with almost everyone gaining a little more support. Check out some of the poll's findings below the break and give us your thoughts in the comments.

The U.S. Constitution "is archaic and boring and lots of it no longer applies anymore."

The grumbling of a snotty 9th grade student in civics class? Nope, it's the pronouncement of Salon political reporter Alex Pareene.