The Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations have dominated political media coverage of the Republican presidential race this past week. I haven’t covered that story here, because I figure you can find the latest developments at any number of news sites. I also doubt it will significantly affect Cain’s standing among Iowa Republican caucus-goers, who either won’t believe the allegations or don’t care about sexual harassment.
Cain reached out to many Iowans directly this week through a robocall “survey.” My notes on the voter identification call, which came around dinnertime on a weeknight, are after the jump.
I don’t know why my household continues to receive so many calls from Republican campaigns and conservative advocacy groups. It’s been a decade since anyone but registered Democrats lived here. In any event, I try to take notes on political surveys and robocalls whenever possible and encourage others to do the same. These notes are not a verbatim transcript of the call from Cain, just my best effort to paraphrase what he said. The answers I provided during the call are in parentheses.
This is Herman Cain, and I’m running for president to raise Cain.
Are you registered to vote? (yes)
My 9-9-9 plan for economic recovery will put Americans back to work. [I think he added something else about the economy that I couldn’t write down.]
Do you agree with me that we live in the best country in the world? (yes)
Do you use Facebook? (yes)
I encourage you to friend me on Facebook.
Do you use Twitter? (yes)
I encourage you to follow me on Twitter at TheHermanCain.
Question about abortion, do you consider yourself pro-life? (no) [I think Cain mentioned here that he is pro-life, but I did not get down his phrasing]
Do you agree with me that Americans have a constitutional right to own and use guns? (no)
Do you believe that marriage should only be between one man and one woman? (no)
Are you male? (no)
Are you 50 years of age or older? (no)
This survey was paid for by Friends of Herman Cain, 404-913-0634.
I find it interesting that Cain is now calling his 9-9-9 tax reform proposal a “plan for economic recovery.” It has nothing to do with putting people back to work and would probably hurt the economy by raising taxes on just about every middle-income and lower-income family.
Speaking of the Republican presidential race, five candidates spoke at the Iowa GOP’s Reagan dinner in Des Moines on Friday night. Kevin Hall liveblogged here, Lynn Campbell covered the event for IowaPolitics.com and O.Kay Henderson filed this Radio Iowa report. It sounds like Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were best-received by the crowd, Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann were solid, and Rick Perry was underwhelming as usual. Cain and Mitt Romney did not attend the event. Gingrich received a standing ovation, and Santorum was interrupted several times by applause after telling the crowd that it was ok to applaud. Santorum and Gingrich both stayed to work the room after the event.
On Saturday night, Cain and Gingrich held their own two-person debate, a friendly affair in front of a tea party audience in Texas. At a press conference afterwards, Cain attacked the media for its coverage during the past week.
This is an open thread. What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers?
7 Comments
A simple answer
The answer is simple: There are too many people working in campaigns on both sides of the aisle who are lazy or incompetent and are only there because they can’t get a real job anywhere else. When you couple that with the fact that most have no quantitative skill set and don’t know how to work with data, the result is terrible targeting. This is not acceptable from any campaign with resources. It’s a complete waste of donor money.
thomasjschultz Sun 6 Nov 2:16 PM
I's acceptable to me for the GOP to waste donor money. n/t
cocinero Sun 6 Nov 3:51 PM
And I like it when you guys waste money
thomasjschultz Sun 6 Nov 8:01 PM
robocalls are so cheap
perhaps it’s cheaper to spray the battlefield by calling a bunch of non-R households than to do the work to come up with decent targeting.
desmoinesdem Sun 6 Nov 4:07 PM
I'll challenge your premise
Robocalls are dirt cheap, but that misses the point. They should already have microtargeting data available to conduct other voter contacting methods. If the data is already there, why would you send robocalls to anyone else?
For example, it doesn’t make sense for a Republican to send a robocall to you, a Democrat whose voter propensity is probably between 0.6 and 1.0 in primary elections (probably closer to one). And that doesn’t require expensive microtargeting to know that. That’s basic stuff that any college student who studies methods has the capacity to do.
thomasjschultz Sun 6 Nov 8:01 PM
Campaign consulting is real work
I understand your larger point though, some people are very good at it though.
moderateiadem Sun 6 Nov 4:14 PM
You're right.
There are good, average, and bad in every profession.
thomasjschultz Sun 6 Nov 7:49 PM