Herman Cain’s got 9-9-9 problems with the GOP after Mitt Romney lost his bid for the White House.
Republicans are just beginning to debate what their party needs to do to avoid another shellacking in the next election. But Cain, a failed GOP primary candidate, has tossed his own grenade: starting off fresh with a third party.
“I never thought that I would say this, and this is the first time publicly that I’ve said it: We need a third party to save this country. Not Ron Paul and the Ron Paulites. No. We need a legitimate third party to challenge the current system that we have, because I don’t believe that the Republican Party … has the ability to rebrand itself.”
The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO suggested the Republicans need to start a new party because of an image problem – not because of their core conservative positions, which he supports. Other analysts think the party’s problems run deeper than a marketing issue.
A coalition of minority voters dealt the GOP a wake-up on Tuesday night, thrusting the party into an existential crisis to discover who they really are now and who they want to be; in the coming days, they will likely be re-evaluating the positions that alienated Hispanics, women and younger voters — all of whom turned out for President Obama and the Democrats in droves.
Cain suspended his candidacy in December after getting tripped up by a slew of sexual harassment allegations and claims of an extra marital affair. He’s continued to peddle his Sim City-esque 9-9-9 tax plan and make odd YouTube clips featuring animals, such as the classic goldfish-flapping-out-of-water-to-represent-the-stimulus video. Maybe it’s Cain himself who needs a fresh brand.
Sarah Muller