Herman Cain -- apparently -- decided to harass women and Herman Cain decided to run for the Republican nomination for president. I don't feel in the least sorry for the man, even less so when he started playing the race card.
But I do feel sorry for his victim who is being victimized all over again. We don't know who she is, but the media evidently do know. They are said to be "camped out" at her house. And now the Washington Post reveals a little more.
It gets complicated...
... One of the two women who accused Cain of sexual harassment indicated she might be having second thoughts about going public with her side of the story, according to her attorney and another person who knows her.
But a second person familiar with the thinking of the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the woman is wary of the ramifications of her name becoming public.
The woman “did not create this story,” the person said. She has been “completely swept up in this hurricane” and is discussing with her husband and family whether to make her story public.
The woman is a federal employee barred from political activities by the Hatch Act, Bennett said. According to public records, she is married to a registered lobbyist who is a registered Republican and has donated to both Democratic and Republican political candidates.
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Isn't that one of those things people say just before they decide -- "for the sake of my family" -- to cut and run?
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There is also the possibility that Mr. Cain could make an emotional confession to some of the allegations, or that it will be determined that one of the other Republican campaigns had leaked the story to news outlets, each of which would change its dynamics significantly. But to state the obvious, there is considerably more downside than upside for Mr. Cain. ...Nate Silver, 538
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But (I betcha!) none of the above has any weight compared to the full weight of the Republican party coming down hard on Cain. What are the chances that, although The Woman clearly exists, the Republican party just doesn't want him on the slate and are using the old harassment payoff as a pretext for pulling him off the stage. The word in Washington/media is that this is the worst bunch of candidates the Republicans have put up in (splutter!) decades. Americans for Prosperity don't like hearing that kind of thing.
I mean, Karl Rove wants The Woman to be let out of the confidentiality agreement.
“What are the facts?,” Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour asked on MSNBC. “If there’s some controversy with negative connotations, you want to get all the facts out, all the cards on the table face up as quickly as you can.”
The call for transparency from Cain was echoed by Karl Rove, chief political strategist for former President George W. Bush, who said freeing the women from the agreement will be the “only way to get past this.”
“It’s going to look unfair if he doesn’t take proactive measures to encourage the restaurant association to allow the women in question to come forward,” Rove said in an interview on the Fox News radio show “Kilmeade and Friends.” ...Bloomberg
Are there racist motives deeply embedded in all this? Oh, sure.
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