High-tech Lynching?

Hermann Cain is still rising in opinion polls even though he has been accused recently of sexual misconduct by former female employees of the National Restaurant Association.  According to Jon Cohen’s Washington Post article entitled “Cain rises in Post-ABC poll despite scandal; most Republicans dismiss allegations,” the Cain campaign has almost eclipsed the consistent frontrunner, Romney, trailing him by just a single percentage point.  Currently, the candidate has a whopping 23 percent of the GOP voting pool ready to throw support his way, with a great deal more support coming now from non-tea party members.  Nevertheless, the Republican electorate remains highly uncertain of their preferred candidate, as fewer than one-third of the individuals who wish to vote for Cain are ultimately unsure of who they will vote for in the upcoming primary election.  Romney is seeing a similar trend.

The scandal that has Cain on the defensive involved, at first, one previous female employee of the National Restaurant Association, and then a second.  Although the candidate consistently denies having any culpability in the matter – calling the entire scenario a “fabrication,” according to the New York Times – the two females were offered very generous severance packages, in conjunction with a confidentiality agreement, after the alleged incidents occurred.  Most substantive interviews regarding the incident with the first woman, which took place at a party, were given to reporters on the condition of anonymity.  The facts regarding the scenario that have thus been extracted must, for that reason, be treated with a responsible level of skepticism.  After all, far too many will benefit from the story to immediately believe it at face value.  Each GOP candidate, especially Perry, Romney, and Gingrich, would immediately see higher poll percentages should Cain fall.  If Cain has a good chance at becoming the Republican nominee, then the Democrats will have a stake in the matter as well.

Hermann Cain’s scandal has sparked some interesting discussion.  The term “high-tech lynching” has resurfaced, as a PAC called “Americans for Hermann Cain” recently used it to describe the current allegations regarding his alleged sexual misconduct.  The organization produced a video, shown above, that includes various media interviews that denigrate the candidate.  The end of the video includes a portion of Clarence Thomas’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, where he defends himself from similar accusations.  Both men are politically conservative African Americans, so the question has been asked, does the “left” dislike the idea of a black Republican?

The individual answering the question in the following video claims that, "the core vindication of liberalism in American society today is...well, we were right about Civil Rights, and all of those on the other side were wrong."  Thus, the argument is that for an African American to say that the Republican platform is better would rob the Democrats of their validity; they would have no justification for existing.  This observation, however, clearly overlooks the fact that the Democratic Party has tended to vote in conjunction with the interests of African Americans ever since the Civil Rights movement.  It also boils the entire focus of the American political system into nothing but race politics.  The accusation that the Democrats created the entire scandal as a modern day form of lynching is unfounded, alarmist, and even offensive to those who actually did lose their lives at the hands of lynch mobs.  Nevertheless, the interesting race dynamics of this presidential election cycle remains something to be investigated.