Rush played the audio clips of Herman Cain yesterday with the Journal Sentinel, pointing out that Herman Cain did get the Libya answer right when he finally got to his answer. And when it comes to federal employees not being able to collectively bargain, Rush said the Sentinel is wrong, that some federal employees can bargain for their wages and benefits.
Rush also noted that many conservative websites, like the media, are sending these videos out saying:
“ok that’s it, we’ve had it, Cain’s finished, it’s over with – this has nothing to do with sexual harassment, let’s just finally admit it, he doesn’t have the slightest clue what he’s saying or what he’s doing when it comes to foreign policy, can we please move on?!”
Here’s the full video:
Just to be clear, I don’t think Cain is necessarily finished but I do believe this will definitely hurt him. While the MSM may be in fact using this to say he’s stupid, I don’t think he’s stupid at all. I think he’s being overly cautious in dealing with the media and it leads him to terrible gaffes like yesterday.
On the topic of federal employees and collective bargaining, if Cain had at least challenged them when they said that federal employees cannot collectively bargain for wages and benefits, it would have sounded like he knew what he was talking about. In reality, I don’t believe he knew in fact that most federal employees can’t collectively bargain (just as I didn’t know some can) and thus he sounded like his depth on policy is weak.
And the same is true when it comes to public employees being able to collectively bargain for wages and benefits. I could possibly accept his answer about being for it unless it creates an undue burden to the state, but he’d need to admit that this nuanced position is basically a “collectively bargaining utopia” that doesn’t exist. Collectively bargaining for wages and benefits in it’s current form is always destructive to the state because the unions just elect politicians that give them what they want at the bargaining table. But he didn’t really go there so again it looks like his policy depth is weak.
The bottom line is that I just feel like he hasn’t done enough hard work when it comes to expanding his breadth of knowledge on the issues. I’ve never expected him to get into the “policy weeds” – in fact I believe most good leaders are the ‘big picture’ types – but some of this is pretty basic. And when you tack on his botching of his position on abortion and his other statements that he’s had to clarify along with the Libya answer yesterday, it’s just become difficult to stand behind him.
At the end of the day he’s got the right principles and I would still have no problem voting for him if he is the nominee. But for now I want to further evaluate other candidates before I pull the wallet out again.
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