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konrad yakabuski

No one seems happier with Herman Cain's rise to the top of the Republican presidential field than pun-crazy American headline writers.

"Yes, He Cain" and "Is Cain Able?" have made the rounds. Another favourite, used to convey experts' reaction to Mr. Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan: "Nein, Nein, Nein."

Indeed, there is so much joking going on about Mr. Cain, including by the candidate himself, that no one is quite sure whether to take him at all seriously.

On paper, the former talk radio host who made a name for himself as the turnaround expert who rescued a flagging national pizza chain, seems credible. And he has a compelling personal story as the self-made son of an Atlanta chauffeur and maid.

But so many politically incorrect pronouncements have come out of Mr. Cain's mouth on the campaign trail that pundits are not sure whether he is running for president or auditioning for his own show on Fox News, the hard right's go-to cable news network.

If his improbable candidacy started out as an attempt to drum up publicity for his suddenly best-selling autobiography, however, it is no longer a laughing matter. Polls now place him in a neck-and-neck race for the nomination with Mitt Romney.

Cain it last?

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Texas Governor Rick Perry each took a turn as chief rival to the moderate Mr. Romney before GOP voters turned on them. Despite protesting that he is no flavour of the month, Mr. Cain, 65, may be just that.

"His rise indicates a restlessness among [conservative] Republicans who are looking for a candidate they can get excited about," University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock says. "Bachmann and Perry proved not to have staying power. So, now they're infatuated with Herman Cain."

Some critics charge that the Tea Party movement, dominated as it is by aging white men and women, has warmed to Mr. Cain primarily to show off its inclusiveness.

"The Tea Party is embracing him because they love him, not because they don't want to be seen as racist," counters Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. "Cain has great rhetorical abilities when he's before a conservative audience."

Still, there is something about this ABC – or American black conservative, as Mr. Cain refers to himself – that Tea Partiers cannot resist. He validates the view that personal responsibility, not affirmative action or welfare, is the key to racial equality.

"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks," Mr. Cain said in response to the recent anti-capitalism protests in New York and other U.S. cities. "If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself."

Although he came of age during the era of lunch-counter sit-ins and earned a math scholarship to the same Atlanta-area black college where Martin Luther King Jr. had studied, Mr. Cain was no civil-rights militant. His mantra was: "I shall overcome."

Indeed, he did. After returning the Godfather's Pizza chain to profitability, Mr. Cain led a leveraged buyout of the Pillsbury subsidiary in 1988 and ran the company until 1996. A decade later, he beat the 30 per cent odds given him and survived stage 4 colon cancer.

Politics became a career option for the part-time Baptist minister after he convincingly took on Bill Clinton in a 1994 town-hall meeting, arguing the then-president's proposed health-care reforms would force Godfather's to resort to layoffs.

He briefly entered the GOP presidential race in 2000 and ran for the Republican Senate nomination in Georgia in 2004. In that latter contest, he surprised nearly everyone by finishing a strong second, ahead of a well-known sitting congressman.

"Cain's real strength then, as it is today, was his rhetoric," Prof. Bullock says.

Still, it is not yet clear whether Mr. Cain is anything more than a gifted salesman. His primary strength, beyond his oratorical skills, appears to be his marketing prowess.

To wit, his 9-9-9 tax plan. It is a catchy idea and seems self-explanatory. It would replace the existing federal tax code with a flat 9-per-cent personal income tax, a 9-per-cent corporate tax and a new 9-per-cent national sales tax. In fact, the plan is quite complex and many experts find the math not quite up to scratch.

Besides, it would stand almost no chance of passing Congress. Democrats think such a flat tax is regressive and most Republicans in Congress abhor the idea of a federal sales tax.

Mr. Cain does not deny that his grasp of foreign policy is at best tenuous. He told the Christian Broadcasting Network: "When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I'm going to say, I don't know."

When asked by CNN, he said that he would consider swapping suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay for U.S. prisoners held by al-Qaeda, only to later insist that he had not heard the "al-Qaeda" part of the question.

He did not look like he was joking when he said he would build an electric fence along the U.S.-Mexico border with enough voltage to kill, but insisted later that "America needs to get a sense of humour."

It is not Mr. Cain's mouth, however, has tripped him up so much as it has been money. He raised only $2.8-million during the third quarter of this year, hardly the kind of dough needed to build a serious campaign organization in key early primary states.

That could change. Mr. Cain said he raised $2-million during the first two weeks of October alone. And, on Wednesday, Cain backers created a "super political action committee" that can independently spend money on his behalf. Unlike candidates, so-called super PACs can also solicit unlimited donations.

The chief operating officer of Mr. Cain's campaign used to work for Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group funded by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire oil magnates. A pro-Cain super PAC would conceivably tap them for money.

Not bad for a candidate who was given no chance of even placing when he entered the GOP race in May. You might say, Mr. Cain, whose book debuted last week at No. 4 on The New York Times bestseller list, has already won.

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