Is Herman Cain the Candidate for 2012, Self Made has cleaned toilets and run a corporation, met payroll WORKED?

“It’s his enthusiasm,” she said. “Wasn’t that what we felt with Ronald Reagan, his enthusiasm?”

Gallup poll released last week showed Mr. Cain with the highest voter intensity score of any Republican presidential contender —

He captivates with his talk radio certainty, his pulpit cadences, and what he describes as his “common-sense business solutions

rags-to-riches personal story and his talk of an “empowerment agenda

Tom Keane, a school board member, state representative and selectman from Bow, said he had been asked to endorse Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor, and had worked for Mr. Romney in the past. But he had turned out twice in one day to see Mr. Cain and, like many, spoke about him rapturously. Mr. Keane praised his background and his ability to think analytically.

Mr. Cain, 65, grew up poor in Georgia, his father working three jobs to finally buy a house for his family. Mr. Cain worked his way through Morehouse College and earned a master’s degree at Purdue University before becoming a vice president at Pillsbury.

Mr. Cain quit and entered the Burger King training program, where potential executives are trained from the grill up, working as “Whopper floppers” and cleaning bathrooms. Soon he was in charge of his region, and within a couple of years Pillsbury asked him to help turn around the Godfather’s chain, which he eventually joined in buying.

He became a folk hero among Republicans in 1994, when he challenged President Bill Clinton on his health care legislation during a televised town-hall-style meeting: “If I’m forced to do this, what will I tell all those people whose jobs I’m forced to eliminate?”

ran for the Senate in Georgia in 2004, coming in second in the Republican primary ahead of a more seasoned politician, and parlayed his success into a career as a talk radio host.

Karl Rove and other Republican notables have dismissed Mr. Cain as little more than a good personal narrative. Mr. Cain dismisses them.

The center of his platform is the so-called fair tax, a 23 percent consumption tax that would replace the federal income tax

He does not shy away from the role that race plays in his campaign. In a new campaign video, he throws his arms around a group of white people and declares, “To all those people who say the Tea Party is a racist organization: Eat your words.”

Liberals, he said, “are scared to death of me. They don’t want me to go up against their beloved Obama. I have done stuff, fixed stuff, can explain stuff and run stuff. He’s been a community organizer, he’s got failed policies. He reads from the teleprompter, I don’t. I’ve got common-sense solutions, he passes 2,700-page legislation. The contrast would be so obvious, and when you get past all of the quantitative stuff, they can’t use race to cover for him.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/us/politics/05ca...