The increased scrutiny on Herman Cain since he became a co-front runner (along with Mitt Romney) for the GOP presidential nomination has not been kind to him, based on the number of mea culpas he's issued out in the past week.
But has it really hurt him?
With the media, which is where most people get their information, Cain is being picked apart for his inconsistencies or simply poor choice of words on a number of fronts, beginning a week ago with his call for electrifying a border fence that he then tried to say initally was a joke, and then followed up by saying, well, it might actually work.
HIs comments on abortion are getting him in hot water, but maybe somebody ought to tell the (relatively meager amount of) voters, who at least in straw polls continue to show their love.
Cain only became serious when he took home the Florida P-5 straw poll a month ago. And that was by getting 37 percent out of less than 3,000 people in that vote, hardly a representative total of the Florida GOP electorate. This weekend in Las Vegas he took another straw poll, this one called the Western Republican Leadership Conference straw poll, taking 31 percent of the 552 people who actually participated.
This article appears in Oct 20-26, 2011.