Herman Cain's sudden surge powered by 9-9-9 plan

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am hardly going to vote for a tax increase on myself. I paid income taxes for 50 years, and now some fool decides that I need to pay 9% more on money from my Social Security income of $18K per year?

No way!

But as I continue to stress, Cain's cockamamie plan will never be enacted, because Cain will not get the nomination, could never win the election, and even if those very improbable events occurred, he would not have the clout to get it through Congress. I doubt that even a majority of Republicans would vote for it.

[BT]

I am hardly going to vote for a tax increase on myself.

Yes it's always better to vote for a tax increase on someone else.

That's the progressive way of doing things.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Let's see, a 9% tax increase on the $18K i get from Social Security, plus a 9% sales tax on everything I buy, including food and drugs. Plus I get to listen to this crackpot blowhard loser on the TV for four years.Yeah, sure, that sounds fair.

And calling Cain a LOSER is 100% accurate: he ran for the Senate and lost. Ergo, he's A LOSER

[R.R.]

Let's see, a 9% tax increase on the $18K i get from Social Security, plus a 9% sales tax on everything I buy, including food and drugs. Plus I get to listen to this crackpot blowhard loser on the TV for four years.Yeah, sure, that sounds fair.

This is the best argument for Cain that I've ever seen. I'd love to see XO suffer.

[Plane]

 Plus I get to listen to this crackpot blowhard loser on the TV for four years.Yeah, sure, that sounds fair.

   I don't see why, you havent listened to him yet.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I have listened to Cain. He is a crackpot and a blowhard.

And if he is so effing great, why didn't he get elected Senator

[Plane]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44921197/ns/politics-decision_2012/                                                                                                                           who will pay more? the people who spend more money on new goods. the sales tax only applies to people who buy new goods. not used goods . that's a big difference that doesn't come out.

>> for those 30 million americans who don't pay income tax , including 16 million elderly americans , you concede they would, in fact, pay more.

>> not the elderly. that's two different groups. let's talk about the elderly. you don't pay taxes on your social security income . it replaces the capital gains tax . many of the elderly make money off of their investments, they won't pay that. tax on dividends and tax on income generated from investments, you only pay once. so in that sense, it helps the elderly.

>> the other defect in the plan comes from fellow conservatives who say, you got some problems here. this is what "the wall street journal " said about it this past week. the real political defect, the "journal" writes, of the cain plan is that it imposes a new national sales tax while maintaining the income tax . mr. cain 's rates are desubjectively low but the current income tax was introduced in 1913 , with a top rate of 7% amid promises that it would never exceed 10%. by 1918 the top rate was 77%. the politics of a national sales tax is bad enough on its own. a 9% rate when combined with state and local levies would mean a tax on goods of 17% or more in many places. the cries for exemptions would be great.

>> don't combine it with state taxes. this doesn't address state taxes. if you add them together, yes, you would get that number. this is a replacement structure. these are replacement taxes. they're not on top of anything. we replace capital gains tax . we replace the payroll tax . we replace corporate income tax . replace personal income tax . and replace the death tax . http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44921197/ns/politics-decision_2012/

[Plane]

Is the 9-9-9 plan hard to explain to Germans?

[Plane]

"............Gregory let it go at that and moved on to another one of Cain's presumably insufficiently thoughtful statements: "You've also said that stupid people are ruining America.... Who exactly are you talking about?"

MR. CAIN:  People who are uninformed.  People who will not look at an alternate idea.  People who are so dug in with partisanship and partisan politics.  Open-mindedness is what's going to save this country.  The reason that my message is appealing is because it's simple and people can understand it.  You know, a good idea transcends party politics...
Somehow, the next question on Gregory's list was: "Is race a factor in this campaign?" Obviously, Cain's answer is going to be no. I'm more interested in why Gregory jumped from "stupid people" to race. Gregory next displays the new Newsweek cover, which calls Cain "the Anti-Obama," and starts to put together a question: "You've actually talked a bit about race, though, and you've created a contrast between yourself and your experience as an African-American, a term you don't like, by the way."

So suddenly the topic is the terminology of race: African-American or black American, which Cain prefers. Gregory asks why. Cain says:

Because my roots go back through slavery in this country.  Yes, they came from Africa, but the roots of my heritage are in the United States of America.  So I consider myself a black American.
That's a very rich statement. Slavery is a heritage. But Gregory goes for the implicit distinction between Cain and Obama: "So you draw some distinction between yourself and your experiences as a black man in America and the experience of President Obama."

Cain says:

Absolutely.  I came from very humble beginnings.  My mother was a maid, my father was a barber and janitor and a chauffeur.  We, we had to, we had to learn--do things the old-fashioned way.  We had to work for it.  I--my parents never saw themselves as a victim, so I didn't learn how to be a victim.  I didn't have anything given to me.  I had to work very hard in order to be able to go to school and work my way through school....
Notice how simply and vividly he struck a chord — the classic black American experience — and made it resonate for anyone who works for living. There is a quality of nobility, that fits with the idea of heritage. Gregory is at a complete loss, I think, to do anything with this:

MR. GREGORY:  You actually said President Obama's outside the mainstream.  So you're making a different, more of a social cultural background distinction between you and the president.

MR. CAIN:  More experiential.  Look at his experiences vs. my experiences. It was more at a contrast of experiential differences than anything else.

MR. GREGORY:  Let's talk about foreign policy...
YET MORE: I liked the way, when asked to name his model for the ideal Supreme Court justice, he focused on Clarence Thomas:

I believe that Justice Clarence Thomas, despite all of the attacks that he gets from the left, he basically rules and makes his decisions, in my opinion, based upon the Constitution and solid legal thinking. Justice Clarence Thomas is one of my models.

MR. GREGORY: Has he been targeted unfairly, you think?

MR. CAIN: I think he has been targeted unfairly.
Gregory declines to follow up about what the unfairness was. He moves on to the topic of Cain's wife Gloria, who's been invisible so far. He gave a lovely explanation:

My wife and I, we have a family life, and she is maintaining the calmness and the tranquility of that family life so, when I do get a day off of the campaign trail, I can go home and enjoy my family.
She's his wife, not America's wife. Home is a refuge. That's a good traditionalist message. "http://althouse.blogspot.com/

Posted by Ann Althouse at 1:11 PM 197 comments   
Tags: "Meet the Press", Clarence Thomas, David Gregory, Herman Cain, political spouse, racial politics, slavery, taxes

[Kramer]

Is the 9-9-9 plan hard to explain to Germans?

nine