Herman Cain / 1945–2020 / Tennessee, USA / Businessman, Chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Political Activist, Candidate for 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination
Abortion
Re: origins of Planned Parenthood:
One of the motivations was killing black babies, because they didn’t want to deal with the problems of illiteracy and poverty.
Reported by Manuel Roig-Franzia in “Cain Makes Inroads in Ga. Senate Bid,” Washington Post, July 18, 2004; accessible at washingtonpost.com.
I do not think abortion should be legal in this country. Abortion should not be legal. That is clear. But if a family made the decision to break the law, that’s that family’s decision.
Reported by “America Live,” Fox News, October 21, 2011.
Cain on Cain
I’m not a professional politician. I’m a professional problem solver.
Reported by Sam Stein in “Herman Cain’s 2004 Campaign: ‘Godless’ Gays and Planned Parenthood Eugenics,” huffpost.com, October 5, 2011.
I am an American. Black. Conservative. I don’t use “African American”, because I’m American, I’m black and I’m conservative. I don’t like people trying to label me. “African American” is socially acceptable for some people, but I am not some people. . . .
Reported by Jeffrey Goldberg in “Herman Cain on Why ‘The Black Guy Is Winning,'” Bloomberg View, March 6, 2011; accessible at bloomberg.com.
So we get to the fountain, my brother and I, and we look around, there wasn’t a lot of people there and I said to my brother, “You go first.” He tasted the white water and then we looked around and says, “Your turn.” We tasted—I taste the white water. Then we both taste the colored water, and we looked at each other, six and seven years old. The water tastes the same! What’s the big deal? We had not been taught segregation at the age of six and seven. We wondered what the big deal was about.
Now, that being said and growing in the segregated South, I am not mad at America. I don’t have a grudge against America, because one of the things that has made this nation great in the short 235-year history, Sean, is its ability to change. A lot of other countries don’t have that ability. We ought to be appreciative of the fact that this country has that kind of resilience.
Interview with Sean Hannity, on “Hannity,” Fox News, October 4, 2011.
I well remember, as a young teenager, seeing signs printed in large black letters at the fronts of buses: “White seat from front, colored seat from rear.” One day when I was thirteen, my friends and I were riding home from school in a half-empty bus — this was at the time that the civil rights movement was just getting off the ground and some police officers were just looking for a reason to shoot a black person who “got out of line.” So, counter to our real feelings, we decided to avoid trouble by moving to the back of the bus when the driver told us to.
By that time, the sit-ins and the Freedom Rides had kind of broken the ice, even though things hadn’t fully changed. So we saw it every day on TV and read about it in the news. Dad always said, “Stay out of trouble,” and we did.
Herman Cain, This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House (2011).
And in November 2012, the day after the election, when we wake up that morning and all the votes are counted, and they declare not only all of the local election results, the statewide election results, the senatorial results, and when we wake up and they declare the presidential results, and Herman Cain has been elected, we’ll be able to say: “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty this nation is free at last again.
Herman Cain, This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House (2011).
Federal Reserve
Some people say that we ought to audit the Fed. Here’s what I do know. The Federal Reserve already has so many internal audits it’s ridiculous. I don’t know why people think we’re gonna learn this great amount of information by auditing the Federal Reserve. I think a lot of people are calling for this audit of the Federal Reserve because they don’t know enough about it. There’s no hidden secrets going on in the Federal Reserve to my knowledge.
Reported by Neal Boortz on the Neal Boortz Show (nationally syndicated radio talk show), December 29, 2010.
Healthcare Policy
If Obamacare had been fully implemented when I caught cancer, I’d be dead and here’s why. Here’s why. I was able to go to the doctors that I wanted to go to. As fast as they could do the test. I didn’t have to wait six months like you do in other countries to get a CAT scan, and sometimes people die before they get the CAT scan, because the cancer in my body was spreading so fast. But because I was able to get the treatment as soon as I could, and to get the quality care that I did, that’s what has me alive today. You ought to be able to make those choices if you get a serious illness, not some bureaucrat in Washington, DC.
Remarks at campaign stop, Lexington, South Carolina, August 18, 2011; reported by Geneva Sands in “Herman Cain says he’d ‘be dead’ under ‘ObamaCare,’” thehill.com, August 19, 2013.
Israel
Let me be clear. I am, you know, exploring this whole Presidential run. Let me just tell you what the Cain Doctrine would be as it relates to Israel, if I were President: You mess with Israel, you are messing with the United States of America. It’s that simple. I want to protect that relationship because they have been our only consistent ally in that part of the world.
Interview on Fox News, May 20, 2011.
Q: Do you think the Palestinian refugees, the people who were kicked out of the land in 1948, should be able or should have any right to return to Israeli land?
Interview with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday,” May 22, 2011.
A: Yes. They should have a right to come back if that is a decision that Israel wants to make. Back to—it’s up to Israel to determine the things they will accept. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it real clear in his statement following the statement that President Obama made. They are wiling to make some concessions. They are willing to give on a lot of things. They are willing to be compassionate. I don’t think they have a big problem with people returning.
Muslims
One percent of the practicing religious believers in this country are Muslim. And so I push back and reject them trying to convert the rest of us. And based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them. Now, I know that there are some peaceful Muslims who don’t go around preaching or practicing that. Well, unfortunately, we can’t sit back and tolerate the radical ones simply because we know that there are some of them who don’t believe in that aspect of the Muslim religion.
Reported by Trevor Persaud in “Q & A: Herman Cain on Faith, Calling, and Presidential Aspirations,” christianitytoday.org, March 21, 2011.
There are tons of capable people in this country, and while I have been in this exploratory phase, yes, I have been considering who would I put in various roles, who do I consider to be some of the true patriots of this country that could help a Herman Cain cabinet if I were to run and to become president. And so yes, so far I have not come across or I don’t have acquaintances with people who have professed the Muslim religion who are on a list of people I would consider. We are—we have become a nation of crises, Neil. And being politically correct is not something I’m going to spend a whole lot of time worrying about when we’ve got all of these other problems that we are facing right here in this country.
Reported by Neil Cavuto on “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” Fox News, March 28, 2011.
Obama, Barack
Barack Obama is more of an international. I think he’s out of the mainstream and always has been. Look, he was raised in Kenya, his mother was white from Kansas and her family had an influence on him, it’s true, but his dad was Kenyan, and when he was going to school he got a lot of fellowships, scholarships, he stayed in the academic environment for a long time. He spent most of his career as an intellectual.
Reported by Jeffrey Goldberg in “Herman Cain on Why ‘The Black Guy Is Winning,'” Bloomberg View, March 6, 2011; accessible at bloomberg.com.
Political Philosophy
We have a war on our moral fiber. We will not allow the godless few to destroy our moral foundation.
Reported by Chattanooga Times Free Press, February 2, 2004.
Q: For what possible reason would [Barack Obama] possibly want to destroy America’s economy and place in the world. Where is that coming from?
Interview with Sean Hannity, Fox News, April 14, 2010.
A: Where I’m coming from is if you weaken the United States militarily, economically, and culturally, then America is gonna suffer from the same problems that all of—a lot of the other countries suffer from, and that opens the door to some dramatic change in how we run this country.
Q: Would that fit into black liberation theology, social, Marxism, redistribution, “G.D. America,” “America’s chickens have come home to roost”?
A: It fits into what I would call anti-American, anti-Constitutional, anti-Declaration of Independence. That’s what it fits into.
The American dream is under attack because our government has been hijacked by the liberals in Washington, D.C. . . . They want you to believe that they’re going to drag out enough prisoners and dead people to win the election. Well, let me tell you a little secret. Conservatives that are alive outnumber the dead people and prisoners. … I have a message for the political elites in Washington, D.C.: The United States of America is not going to become the United States of Europe, not on our watch.
Reported by Lynn Hulsey in “Tea Party speaker: ‘Stupid people’ running country,” Dayton Daily News, October 15, 2010.
The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country. The objective of the liberals is to make America mediocre like everybody else who aspire to be like America. That’s their objective. And so the liberals, they have an objective: destroy America, make it mediocre, become part of what they call this world order stuff.
Interview with David Gregory, “Cain on the liberal ‘mission’ to destroy America,” NBC News, October 16, 2011.\
They have only three tactics: S.I.N. They shift the subject, they ignore the facts, and they name-call. Am I right? That’s all they do.
Reported by Kyle Mantyla in “Herman Cain: ‘Stupid People Are Ruining America,'” righwingwatch.org, February 11, 2011.
We don’t need to rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America, we need to re-read the Constitution and enforce the Constitution. We don’t need to re-write, let’s reread! And I know that there are some people that are not going to do that. So for the benefit of those who are not going to read it because they don’t want us to go by the Constitution, there’s a little section in there that talks about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” You know, those ideals that we live by, we believe in, your parents believed in, they instilled in you. When you get to the part about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” don’t stop right there, keep reading. ‘Cause that’s when it says “when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” We’ve got some altering and some abolishing to do!
Rally stump speech, Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta, Georgia, May 21, 2011; reported by Willoughby Mariano in “Cain mistakes Declaration of Independence language for Constitution,” politifact.com, May 25, 2011.
Racism
I don’t believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way. Are there some elements of racism? Yes, it gets back to if we don’t grow this economy, that is a ripple effect for every economic level, and because blacks are more disproportionately unemployed, they get hit the worst when economic policies don’t work. That’s where it starts.
Interview, “Cain: Racism not holding anyone back,” State of the Nation, CNN, October 9, 2011; accessible at cnn.com.