Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Who ratted out Herman Cain? The thick plottens.

Aw c’mon. You’ve seen it on TV. You’ve heard about it on radio. You read it in the New York Times. And on 100 zillion blogs. Do you really need more than one link ­– if that – to know what’s with Herman Cain?

He’s charming. He has this crazy plan to “flatten” taxes by making everybody pay a nine percent tax on everything from their income to their babies' infant formula and their blood pressure pills, and he’s pulled ahead of the Mad Doctor, the Dumb Texan who likes to execute people, and Clueless-About -History Michelle, and is now running neck and neck with Mitt (what kind of a name is Mitt? Have you ever met another Mitt?) …anyway, with Mitt Romney.

Then from out of the blue come revelations that way way, back, sometime in the 1980s when Herman was running a restaurant association, he was accused of sexual harassment of not one, not two, but at latest count three women. And, in the course of crafting a response to these revelations, Herman has forgotten that the truth is the only reliable guide to keeping your story straight.

He didn’t remember it, he first declared. Then he sort of remembered it. Then he misremembered it. There was no settlement paid. Well there was something paid, but it wasn’t a settlement, it was an agreement or something. But he didn’t touch her. Well he may have made some gesture relating to showing one of the women the height of his wife. Well…

Yikes! I’m not going to go through all of it. I have a bigger question.

This has all the makings of

a trite detective novel

I keep hearing that some Republicans are saying the Democrats leaked the story, but that makes no sense at all. At least not yet. It is to Barack Obama’s advantage to have all the sharks in the Republican presidential pool going after one another as long as possible, spilling each others’ political blood, wrecking one-another’s images, smearing each other so that the Democrats won’t have to and can take the high road instead, come the presidential elections.

We ought to have a movie with a scene in which a great detective hauls into the library Herman the Hermanator, and Slippery Mitt, and Texas Rick the Executor, and the Newt Man, and Michelle the Misinformed, and Mad Doctor Ron, and Santorum from the Sanitarium, and whoever else the Republicans can haul in from their comic book cast of characters.

“One of you tried to kill the Hermanator,” says the great detective, “and none of you is leaving until we have the guilty party. Now let us begin.

“Mitt Romney, you have the most to gain. You were in the lead, and now the Hermanator is neck-and-neck with you, and if opposition research knocks the Hermanator off his pedestal, you stand the most to gain.

“Rick Perry, you were number one in the straw polls against Mitt until you proved in debate you’re so dumb that if they made you dog catcher, you’d fill the pound with hot dogs. Besides, CNBC on the evening of December 2nd, was rife with rumors that the agents who leaked the news about Herman's harassments was you. So maybe you’re leaking on Herman to get him out of your way so you can be one of the ones in the lead again. You’re ignoring warnings that even if you pull ahead, your Republican opponents are going to start a whispering campaign. You know, if they said it in Texan it would be, “That good ole boy is dumber than a box of rocks.”

“Michelle, don’t you worry. I’ll explain to you later what a rock is. And also what a gay person is, since you obviously wouldn’t know one if you stumbled over him at a wedding.”

Well, you can see where all this goes. Finally it comes around to Herman.

Did Herman rat out himself?

“Herman, you’re a suspect, too. You’re in over your head. Somebody may have sat down with you and showed you that the vast majority of people who will vote in the presidential elections is saying “Nein, Nein, Nein!” to your nine-nine-nine plan. The best way for you to get out of the mess you'd be in if for some reason you became president is to say you’re not playing any more with people who dredge up thirty year old scandals to smear you with, so you’re taking your bat and ball and you’re going home.”

So who did do it?

A little birdie told me it’s those stiletto-smooth guys in the Romney camp. But what do I know?


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