What Herman Cain did in Orlando this weekend was both completely
unexpected and entirely predictable. As late as Friday afternoon,
none of the pundits expected the Atlanta businessman to win the
Florida GOP’s “Presidency 5” straw poll. But if what it took to win
was a dynamic speaker who could bring a roomful of grassroots
Republicans to their feet, Cain’s victory was in some sense
inevitable.
“Send Washington a message!” Cain thundered from the stage
of the Orange County Convention Center, prompting one of seven
standing ovations he received Saturday in his speech preceding the
vote in which he stomped Texas Gov. Rick Perry so badly that the
Republican front-runner may never recover.
Perry’s disastrous debate performance Thursday — in which
he said opponents of college tuition subsidies for illegal
immigrants “don’t have a heart” — was the precipitating event of
Cain’s triumph. As the old saying goes, luck is the intersection of
preparation and opportunity, and Cain was perhaps uniquely prepared
to take advantage of the opportunity Perry’s stumble presented. In
analyzing the straw poll results,
Byron York of the Washington Examiner remarked on
Cain’s “deep, booming voice and a style that any motivational
speaker would envy,” perhaps not realizing that long before he
became a presidential candidate, Cain was quite popular as a
motivational speaker at business conferences. He also spent years
as a talk-radio host on Atlanta’s WSB radio (which was where
I first met him in 2007) and was one of the most popular
speakers at Tea Party rallies in 2009 and 2010.
Cain’s ability to fire up conservative crowds as a speaker
is unmatched by any of his rivals for the 2012 nomination, but his
ability to win over grassroots Republicans one-on-one also stood
him in good stead in Orlando. “When people meet Herman, they like
Herman,” the candidate’s spokeswoman, Ellen Carmichael, observed
to me several months ago. Cain’s cheerful confidence and
down-to-earth good humor win him friends everywhere he goes. In the
week leading up to the Florida straw poll, he traversed the state
on a “Common Sense Solutions”
bus tour, and he spent much of the weekend meeting informally
with delegates in small groups.
Perry’s Thursday debate debacle created a dilemma for many
of the 3,500 delegates credentialed for the straw-poll who had come
to Orlando planning to cast their ballots for the front-runner from
Texas. Among those was state
Rep. Scott Plakon, a popular conservative from a district north
of Orlando. “Like a lot of people, he showed up expecting to vote
for Perry,” said Republican activist Sarah Rumpf, who was
sitting with Plakon and his wife Susie — all supporters of GOP
Senate hopeful Adam Hasner — at a
candidate forum Friday afternoon when Plakon mentioned he was
thinking about endorsing Cain. Rumpf immediately contacted Cain’s
campaign staff and, a few hours later, the Plakons met privately
with Cain and found they had much in common. Like Cain, Plakon is a
businessman and a strong foe of Obamacare, and was recently named
Florida Legislator of the Year by Americans for Prosperity, an
activist group deeply involved in the Tea Party movement. Plakon’s
endorsement lent important prestige to Cain’s candidacy and, when
it was announced at a gathering of Cain’s supporters Friday night
in a packed ballroom at the Rosen Centre Hotel, the atmosphere was
“electric,” Rumpf said.
By Saturday morning, the shift toward Cain was
reported by Byron York, who nevertheless described a Cain
victory as “unlikely.” Yet the momentum snowballed against Perry,
who suddenly shot to the top of the polls after entering the 2012
campaign six weeks ago and, just as suddenly, was buried by a sense
of impending doom.
Dave Weigel of Slate captured the mood in an evocative phrase:
“The shadows of vultures have been all over the Perry campaign
since the debate.”
Ah, yes: The
debate. Perry’s clumsy defense of the Texas law that permits
illegal aliens to qualify for in-state tuition appears destined to
enter the history books as one of the most costly political debate
bungles of all time. Rumpf noted that Florida has immigration woes
of its own, and an excellent state university system with low
tuition for residents. “I’ve known people who moved here [from
other states] and took jobs at theme parks just so their kids could
qualify for in-state tuition,” Rumpf said. “For Perry to say, ‘If
you don’t agree with me, you have no heart’ — people got mad… they
were insulted.”
That insult sent the straw-poll delegates to Cain, a
staunch foe of illegal immigration who once joked that the border
should be protected not only by a fence, but also a moat full of
alligators. In an ironic denouement, Perry left the Orlando event
early, passing up a chance to give a final speech to straw-poll
delegates Saturday, in order to attend a conservative event in
Michigan, only to suffer another embarrassment when former
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt
Romney beat him decisively in a straw poll there.
Headline writers described Cain’s Orlando victory as
“stunning” or “shocking,” and reporters noted that his 37 percent
of the straw-poll vote was more than Perry (16 percent) and Romney
(14 percent) combined. In a remarkable coincidence, his triumph
occurred just as Cain is scheduled to begin promoting his new book. Perhaps we should not be
so shocked by the success of someone who worked so hard to put
himself at the intersection of preparation and
opportunity.
