Raising Cain: Herman Hunting for Michele and Sarah's Supporters?

Pizza baron Herman Cain is not sitting back and letting his surge in the polls (Stats guru Nate Silver has Cain atop the polls tonight) flounder, especially amid the infatuation with Gov. Rick Perry's $17 million fund-raising bonanza.

With Michele Bachman's backers fleeing and now Sarah Palin's supporters up for grabs, Cain is taking aim at the unemployed, a favorite punching bag for conservatives, along with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who have drawn the ire of some of the GOP presidential slate.

Cain even threw on a little extra cheese with some conspiracy theory during his interview yesterday with The Wall Street Journal.

"I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these demonstrations are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration. Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!" Cain said.

"It is not someone’s fault if they succeeded, it is someone’s fault if they failed," he added.

With then field set, Cain has grabbed the flavor of the month banner from Perry, but until he starts getting attacked by his GOP bretheren the former boss of Godfather's Pizza might not fold anytime soon.

Sarah Palin Joins Chris Christie on the Sidelines

Sarah, Inc. is staying open for business.

A day after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said for the last time he is not running for President, Sarah Palin finally ended her would-be candidate charade as well, saying after self-reflection she will not seek the Republican nomination.

"This has been prayerfully considered," the Fox News commentator said today on a popular right radio-wing radio program.

Duh.

Like Christie, Palin used her pretend run for President to help raise money. Through June, Palin's PAC had raised $1.65 million from 24,000 individuals, the Center for Responsive Politics reported.

Why would Palin leave her cash-happy life as Queen of the Tea Party for a low-paying job like President of the United States?

Steadily falling in the polls, it became clear Palin would not run for President when she abruptly quit her job as governor of Alaska in 2009. Being a quitter was considered not to be a good sign of leadership.

More recently, she showed her hand when as she threatened to sue author Joe McGinniss over his best-selling book, "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin." Serious Presidential candidates do not sue authors, they push back.

Palin ended her Barnumesque ruse today when she told conservative radio host Mark Levin
that she will not be seeking the Republican nomination for President. Levin read a statement from Palin on the air.

"I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office -- from the nation's governors to congressional seats and the presidency," Palin wrote.

"I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets, including in the race for president where our candidates must embrace immediate action toward energy independence through domestic resource developments of conventional energy sources, along with renewables," she said. 

"We must reduce tax burdens and onerous regulations that kill American industry, and our candidates must always push to minimize government to strengthen and allow the private sector to create jobs," Palin added.

The move sets the table for center-right candidate and frontrunner Mitt Romney to have a clear path to the GOP nomination, barring a Lazarus-like resurrection from Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose support for illegal immigrants and mush-mouth debate performances have him in a death spiral in the polls.

It is probably not good news for the Obama campaign, which would have loved to play against one of the Tea Party darlings in the White House sweepstakes next year. Romney is a different cup of tea, topping President Obama in the current head-to-head polls.

The Tea Party is the Big Winner at the Ames Straw Poll

Whether you take your tea sweet or unsugared, there was plenty served up at the Ames Straw poll, where, with so many variables in play, the biggest winner in the unscientific tally was really the Tea Party.

Rep. Michele Bachmann is taking her victory lap today after edging out Rep. Ron Paul to finish first in the Ames Straw Poll, but for Tim Pawlenty the race is over.

The conservative anti-government voters who form the core of the Tea Party essentially delivered a win yesterday for not one, but two candidates: Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Paul (R-Tex.), the latter with a close second-place finish. Bachmann and Paul made a strong connection with Tea Party voters, while Pawlenty did not.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also is believed to have picked up some Tea Party backing in a write-in campaign that gave him more votes than former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, whose name was on the ballot, though he did not formally participate in the straw poll.

"Rick Perry won the straw poll at an event I was at. He has a lot more Tea Party support than many believe," Tweeted Tea Party Nation Chairman Judson Phillips.

Those results for Bachmann, Paul and Perry are a pretty strong indication the Tea Party is highly energized and easy to organize, even as polls show it is increasingly unpopular with most Americans. The Tea Party vote turns out, and the loosely held organization will be a deciding factor -- perhaps the deciding factor -- in the GOP nomination process.

It is not worth arguing one way or the other about Pawlenty's distant third-place finish. The former Minnesota Gov. was without a message (especially within the super-charged Tea Party and evangelical voters) and remained where he was going into the straw poll -- atop a second tier of candidates, at best. It was enough of a sign for him to quit the race.

Bachmann received twice as many votes as Pawlenty, and overnight he went from spinning his third-place finish as a fresh start for his campaign to admitting he had as much traction as a bald tire in a blizzard.

Pawlenty's problem was not simply a weak finish in a straw vote that is bought by the candidates with a $30 ticket, food and drink and lots of live (mostly country) music. He already had been overtaken by the new kid on the block, the governor of Texas, who has early momentum and is an instant darling of the main stream media and another option for the Tea Party voters.

Perry brings a plain-talking, slash-first-and-ask-questions-later approach that almost sounds like a common-sense way to solve the nation's problems. He drew on an angry optimism to attack President Obama and reach out to Tea Party and evangelical voters with his presidential campaign announcement speech yesterday half a country away in Charleston, S.C.

"The fact is for nearly three years, President Obama has been downgrading American jobs, he's been downgrading our standing in the world, he's been downgrading our financial stability, he's been downgrading our confidence, and downgrading the hope for a better future for our children," Perry declared.

The takeway for the Obama campaign may be Republican field is telegraphing the election's biting partisan lines of attack, barring a spectacular unforeseen event or the economy getting even worse for President Obama. The jabs will be loaded with Tea Party rhetoric.

Not all the titans of the Tea Party emerged unscathed. One Tea Party darling may be steeped in a downward spiral: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's pre-game boom was a post-game bust.

Palin stole some of the limelight by showing up in Iowa this weekend, but Mama Grizzly failed to make a blip in the straw poll (She was not on the ballot, but there were some expectations that she would make a showing as a write-in candidate). The base Republicans have decided she is not running.

The wild card Tea Party player will continue to be Paul, the man that the mainstream media cannot seem to mention without adding, "... but conventional wisdom is that he cannot win the nomination." Now the conventional wisdom is Bachmann is a time bomb because she cannot win over independent voters.

The problem with conventional wisdom is that this is not a conventional primary season. This is the Tea Party's first run in a presidential election and its members are prone to the unconventional.

It seems almost counterintuitive in this climate to hear pundits arguing that the only reason Paul had a strong finish in Ames was because his followers are so loyal and well-organized. This 2012 GOP primary landscape is new ground, and the Tea Party is set to stake its claim to some of its available acreage.

Perry and Palin: Gods of (Stealing) Thunder

Aficionados of political mischief are getting a boatload of the headline-stealing shenanigans this week.

Those Republican rascals, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are stealing the limelight from the nine GOP presidential contenders on the ballot in the hugely unscientific free-lunch vote in Iowa, known as the Ames Straw Poll.

Perry, the rising star of the Republican ranks, was first to strike, letting it leak earlier this week he will fly to South Carolina Saturday, the same day as the straw poll, to declare his presidential intentions at the RedState Gathering 2011, a political lovefest for conservative bloggers.

The gun-toting governor goes to Greenfield, N.H., later that day for a house party hosted by Perry-promoting partisan, Republican New Hampshire Deputy House Speaker Pamela Tucker. Perry is expected to fly to Iowa a day later, leaving little doubt of his political aspiration for higher office. 

Not to be outdone and never one to miss an opportunity to rally her roguishness, Mama Grizzly is revving up her "One Nation" bus tour and taking it to Iowa this weekend, as well.

"We accept with gratefulness an invitation to meet folks at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines this week," Palin wrote in an email to her supporters.

"I'm also excited to try some of that famous fried butter-on-a-stick, fried cheesecake-on-a-stick, fried Twinkies, etc. I'll enjoy them in honor of those who'd rather make us just 'eat our peas'!" Palin added with dig at President Obama's "Eat your Peas" comment during the debt battle.

Nine candidates are on the straw poll ballot, but three -- former Govs. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts  and Jon Huntsman of Utah and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich -- are not officially participating in the vote taken on the campus of Iowa State University.

The official participants include Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, businessman Herman Cain, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Thad McCottter of Michigan.

The campaigns buy $30 tickets and hand them out to supporters, who in turn listen to speeches, eat and drink for free and then theoretically vote for the candidate who brought them there.

The Iowa Republican State Central Committee takes the event very seriously and so does the mainstream media, though often with a wink and a nod after hours at their hotel bars.

Sometimes the straw poll gets it right, but it was a bust four years ago when Romney won it and then his campaign went on to collapse like a house of cards in an Iowa twister: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses and the GOP nomination went to Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

But for the high-minded folks who see the Ames Straw Poll as a virtually meaningless made-for-TV political junket for the national press corps, take solace: The corporate media is going to pump millions of dollars into Iowa, and in this economic climate that is a very good thing.

You Would Think Bachmann Would Know the Adams Family

Rep. Michelle Bachmann is having a tough time sticking to the script in her bid for the Republican nomination for President.

A day after she confused the actor John Wayne with the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the Minnesota Republican was at it again, this time mixing up John Quincy Adams with his father John Adams.

The newly crowned queen of the Tea Party made the gaff when she defended to ABC's George Stephanopoulos her statement that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery.

"Well if you look at one of our Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, that’s absolutely true. He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father’s secretary. He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery," Bachmann said.

Stephanopoulos responded, "He wasn’t one of the Founding Fathers – he was a President, he was a Secretary of State, he was a member of Congress, you’re right he did work to end slavery decades later. But so you are standing by this comment that the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery?"

Bachmann retorted, "Well, John Quincy Adams most certainly was a part of the Revolutionary War era. He was a young boy but he was actively involved."

This is at least the second time Bachmann flubbed an issue related to the Revolutionary War era. The first coming when she suggested the "shot heard 'round the world" was fired in New Hampshire as opposed to Massachusetts, where of course it was fired.

But Bachmann is not the only Tea Party celebrity who does not know her Revolutionary war-era history. The woman Bachmann deposed as the queen of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, recently suggested that Paul Revere in his historic ride to warn that "the British are coming" did so to warn the British.

Is it too much to ask that people associated with something called the Tea Party actually know what was going on during the era of the actual Boston Tea Party?

Pawlenty Goes Chicken Hawk Two Weeks After Being Chicken

GOP  presidential hopeful Tim  Pawlenty accused President Obama of failing in his words, "to carry out an effective and coherent strategy in response" to the uprisings in the Middle East and Northern Africa, known as the "Arab Spring."

Apparently seeking to carry the neocon mantle in the Republican field, Pawlenty accused the President of treating Israel "as a problem, rather than as an ally."

The attacks on the Obama administration's foreign policy came during an address today before the Council on Foreign Relations.

It was tough talk for the former Minnesota governor, who just two weeks ago in the first New Hampshire GOP presidential debate embraced an isolationist foreign policy position, calling for fewer interventions abroad. What a difference a couple of weeks makes.

Pawlenty also refused to mix it up with Mitt Romney over what he had called "ObamaneyCare" -- a too-cute attack that sought to link the health care reforms implemented in Massachusetts by then-Gov. Romney and last year by Obama.

Obama admittedly was late to siding with the revolutionaries in Egypt and Libya, but he has more than made up with his commitment to doing all he can to prop up the pro-democracy freedom movement.

The President, meanwhile, is in Iowa today discussing incentives for creating new manufacturing jobs, the Holy Grail of the U.S. economy. He is at an ALCOA plant in eastern Iowa that makes components for jumbo jets. 

And the President isn't the only big-name politician in the state. Maybe wouild-be GOP presidential candidate Sarah Palin is there too Palin, about 150 miles from Obama, to attend the premiere of "The Undefeated," a sappy documentary about her time as governor of Alaska and her ascent to the GOP's vice presidential nominee in 2008.