Mr Herman Cain and The Tea Party Movement

October 19, 2011

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Mr Herman Cain and The Tea Party Movement in American Politics

By Umapagan Ampikaipakan (10-18-11)

Herman Cain–A Token of Discontent with Obama?

WHEN (Alexis) de Tocqueville wrote about democracy in America — when he would wax lyrical about its people and their ideologies, when he would claim that he “knew of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion” — he seemed to do so with the remarkable foreknowledge that she would be the very same nation that would give birth to the likes of the Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party movement within the GOP (nickname for Republican party) is a reactionary one. An ultra-conservative faction that was spawned in response to the Obama presidency, that gained momentum during the last mid-term elections, and that recently won a small victory with John Boehner and his debt proposal. But it’s election season now, it’s game time, and the Tea Party is proving to be more of a bane than a boon to the Republicans when it comes to picking a presidential nominee.

The party is split — if not down the middle, then at least by way of a silent majority and a very vocal minority — and each candidate is struggling to find that balance, that elusive area of compromise in trying to appeal to its two factions.

For now, however, for the briefest of moments, the Tea Party is facing a strange and ephemeral thing, it is experiencing its Warholian 15 minutes, in the agony and the ecstasy that is Herman Cain — the 65-year-old black man who is the current front-runner for the 2012 Republican Party nomination.

In three of the last five national polls, Cain has either tied or surpassed Mitt Romney. It is also the first time since the short-lived Colin Powell presidential draft of 1995 that a black candidate led in polls for the GOP nomination.

So what is the appeal of Herman Cain? The general consensus is that at this early stage in the election game, most voters still have absolutely no idea what to do yet, and Cain is just how they’re voicing their indecision. Because they aren’t quite ready to settle on Romney just yet.

There is also his catchy — but ultimately goofy — 9-9-9 tax plan. Cain’s solution to America’s economic woes is to simplify matters by replacing the current tax code with a nine per cent income tax, a nine per cent business tax, and a nine per cent sales tax.

Then, after this plan works, “amidst a backdrop of the economic boom created by the Phase 1 Enhanced Plan”, he will replace those taxes with a national consumption tax of 23 per cent.

It isn’t anything new. It is vintage GOP rhetoric and a play on what Ronald Reagan proposed in 1980, on what Steve Forbes proposed in 1995. Because every time the Republicans are trying to oust a Democrat from the White House, they always fall back to that base who are generally convinced that the tax code is stacked against them.

Cain wants to get America moving again and he wants to do so via the gospel of simplicity. This notion that solutions are not as complex as the experts say, and that much of the current mess has been caused by those preaching complexity. Alas, fixing the tax code isn’t as easy as manipulating the game settings in SimCity. Alas, Pizza Hut is not the American economy in microcosm.

Now there is good reason the world isn’t getting as excited about Cain as they once did about Obama. And it isn’t just a case of been there, done that, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.

There is a difference between the rise of Obama and the sudden popularity of Cain. In that Obama was always a serious player and Cain is merely playing a role. That of the token. Nothing more than a white Republican in blackface. Cain is almost a caricature of the black man in America. So much so that he feels like he was written for a sitcom. If Obama is The Cosby Show, then Cain is Diff’rent Strokes. And everyone is just waiting for him to go: “Watchu talkin’ ’bout Willis.”

Then again, the constant comparisons of himself to Haagen-Daz’s Black Walnut because “it tastes good all the time” comes pretty close. There is very little doubt that Cain is merely that pre-primary distraction to the eventual Romney nomination. Like Howard Dean was to John Kerry. Like Steve Forbes was to Bob Dole. He has somehow tapped into a national enthusiasm — or at least a national discontent. He is having his moment. He might as well enjoy it while it lasts. At least before things get really complicated.

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