CAN IT MELT IF IT WAS NEVER SOLID?:

Herman Cain's team bumbles toward 2012 (JONATHAN MARTIN, 11/30/11, Politico)

The botched responses to allegations of marital infidelity, sexual impropriety and his own gaffes -- not to mention the puzzling strategic decisions -- have, in the eyes of many veteran strategists, reached record levels of ineptitude.

It's an operation that has repeatedly contradicted its own candidate, leveled baseless charges, and put Cain in difficult political spots with little apparent forethought.

The chain of events following a woman's claim Monday that she had a 13-year affair with the Republican presidential hopeful provides the freshest evidence. Campaign manager Mark Block confirmed to ABC News Tuesday that Cain is "reassessing whether to stay in the race," while spokesman J.D. Gordon told ABC the opposite: that Cain is simply reassessing campaign strategy, such as "what states we visit, what interviews we do, how we allocate resources - things like that."

Later in the day, Block told ABC there's "no way he's dropping out," and that the reassessment was "not a reassessment of withdrawing" from the 2012 race.

That familiar Keystone Kops performance is a reflection of an organization staffed by few operatives with presidential experience, working for a political neophyte who's proven himself ill-equipped for a national campaign. The combination of a supremely self-assured candidate -- speaking in the third-person and convinced of his own ability to talk himself out of any jam -- surrounded by a group of not-ready-for-prime-time aides making it up as they go along has resulted in a campaign meltdown for the ages.

The question is why/whether anyone ever took the candidate seriously in the first place.  IA is a caucus state, with said caucuses dominated by Evangelicals.  It rewards organization and Christian credibility.  Mr. Cain had neither.

So having barely registered he'd head to NH, where he's an afterthought in the polls and not interested in the sort of retail politics that the state requires of candidates.  And then he'd be out of the race.  And that was his best case scenario.

Posted by oj at November 30, 2011 8:10 AM
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