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Monday, October 31, 2011

Why Herman Cain Leads the GOP Field: The Clarence Thomas Factor?

    He's the Right wing dream candidate. He wants to cut taxes for the top .01 percent-not the top 1 percent-while at the same time raising taxes for everybody else, he wants to cut Social Security, and he doesn't believe that we have any right to civil liberties or at least those of us who are Muslims.

   Now there's something else for the Right wing to gush over. He is accused of sexual harassment women who worked with him back when he ran the National  Restaurant Association  back in the 1990s. Talk about the trifecta. Regressive tax policies, no civil liberties, and a personal history of being an accused sexual offender. And bear in mind that he talks on and on about how Clarence Thomas is who he most admires.

    As the Yahoo headline puts it, Cain 'denoucnes the charges but doesn't deny it.'

http://news.yahoo.com/cain-denounces-harassment-claims-025800689.html

   The charges were made in a Politico article which admittedly doesn't provide all the specifics. However Cain's response to the report is interesting.

   "It is difficult to assess the potentially damaging allegations, as the article relies on unnamed sources, does not identify the women, and does not detail what is said to have happened. But the piece does say that the women received financial settlements in the five-figure range in leaving the trade group."

    Asked for comment Sunday night, Cain’s vice president for communications, J.D. Gordon, responded with a statement titled “Inside the Beltway media attacks Cain."

    He added: “Dredging up thinly sourced allegations stemming from Mr. Cain’s tenure as the chief executive officer at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s, political trade press are now casting aspersions on his character and spreading rumors that never stood up to the facts.”

     Despite Gordon’s characterization of the “political trade press” assailing his boss, what is at issue here is a single report in Politico—one whose allegations Cain has declined to flatly deny.

     Politico says that “the women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by Cain that made them angry and uncomfortable” and that they later signed agreements barring them from talking about their departures. There were “conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature,” the report says, as well as “descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable.” An unnamed source cited by Politico says one of the women cited “an unwanted sexual advance” by Cain at a hotel where an event was being held.

     If this is a media hit job, Mr. Cain would do a lot towards establishing this by simply denying it. As he seems more interested in denouncing the messenger than denying the message there's no reason the story should go away.

    

  

   

   

  

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