Herman Cain is discovering that there are some truisms in politics and war that simply are not reversible by eccentricity.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
Which is to say -- from Politico -- here's the field reaction to Herm's way-too-personal personnel skills:
[Ron] Paul’s campaign insisted that it would steer clear of attacks on Cain’s "character".... The Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman campaigns all declined to address the story. A representative for Rick Perry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
So with whom does this leave the rabidly anti-Mitt base? Bachmann has already flamed out, and her frozen appearance yesterday on ABC's "This Week" only confirmed her sad diagnosis of creeping catatonia. Perry is still trying to string together an intelligible English sentence (or coherent thought), and had he even a tenth of W.'s renowned verbal skills, he might succeed. Yet now his heart seems as demoralized as his tongue is tied.
Huntsman? A Bolshevik. Santorum leaves a detectable, malodorous trail of slime that even the anti-Mitt base can't tolerate; and they ffffundamentally don't trust the Tiffany-trusting Gingrich.
So the process of elimination narrows the number-two slot to one: Ron Paul. And if he hewed to only two lines of argument -- auditing the Fed and returning to the Republican brand of isolationist, prewar American Firsterism -- rather than frightening old women and literate children with spooky tales of shredded safety nets, he might have a legitimate shot at retaining a competitive status.
After all, he's running third in most polls as things stand; and despite what George Will believes, in politics there's nothing wrong with a little Romneyesque "trimming."