Cain Pain II: First Blood

Seems Herman Cain's continued frontrunner status has earned him the ire of Rick Perry, and garnered the first sex scandal of the campaign! Normally sex scandals are bad, but this one's far worse than it should be, thanks to Cain's inept handling of the controversy. Things are so bad, some are actively predicting the fall of the Cain campaign entirely -- though those people tend to be the selfsame ones who called him the flavor of the week a couple weeks ago. 

(Full disclosure: I'm one of those people.)

That isn't a hope, by the way. I don't hope Cain fails to get his party's nomination -- quite the opposite. From his complete lack of foreign policy gravitas, his government inexperience, his claim to fame being as Boss of a pizza family (that's mobster talk), and now this values-voter-shunning sex scandal, I could foresee another '08 happening if he were the Republican opponent. But I can't believe Obama could possibly be that lucky.

I mean, at the same time, his "leading from behind" strategy wins the war in Libya (I'd rather lead from behind and win than shock-and-awe and lose), he can claim victory in Iraq, and we've seen a few positive indicators for the economy; his numbers seem to be flirting with the idea of creeping upward. Could we possibly see the return of the political wunderkind who defeated both the Clinton and Republican political machines those many long years ago?

Chris Matthews feels differently about my hesitance to chalk this up to luck, and has even said so on his show a few times. Is Obama one of the luckiest politicians in recent history? It's certainly thought-provoking.

Not to be all about MSNBC or anything, but their token Republican has been spreading rumors of right-wing voters who say they'd rather run an imperfect but ideologically pure candidate (ie Cain or Paul) and lose than run Romney, who's already being cast as the consumate flip-flopper. I have no idea how the average GOP primary voter thinks, but I do know Kerry was beaten in 2004 on the flip-flop charge and some swiftboating. Could the same work against Romney? Could healthcare be his swiftboat?

And the scandal says something very interesting about Perry, the candidate suspected of leaking the story to Politico in the first place. I've hoped from the start that Michelle Bachmann would be the attack dog of the campaign -- and in some ways she has been -- but Perry seems to be landing the only resounding blows against the current frontrunners. Could his ambitions sufficiently soften his opponents before the general election?

So many questions! But that's why we love politics, right?