On Wednesday, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) said he would advise Republican voters to “move on” from Herman Cain in light of new accusations that the former CEO carried on a 13-year extramarital affair. The Hill reports:
"Beyond reassessing his campaign, he probably needs to understand that he is a distracter for what's going on right now and we should move on," West told WMAL’s radio show “Morning Majority.”West, a Tea Party favorite, indicated Cain is already out of the running and the GOP nomination field has come down to “a two-man race.”
He named Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, currently the front-runners in the polls, as the two most likely contenders. West said Romney, who has polled at around 24 percent nationally for months, has “hit a plateau” and called Gingrich, who came up from well behind to become a front-runner within the last few weeks, “very viable” as a candidate.
“Speaker Gingrich is the next in line for conservatives who are looking for someone who is not Mitt Romney,” he said. "But he does have that 200-pound rucksack on his back with a lot of the personal baggage that people are going to come at him about.”
But does Congressman West have a point? Recent polls suggest that regardless of whether or not the allegations are true, Herman Cain’s campaign is in free fall. He’s losing key endorsements in pivotal early primary states, his numbers are plummeting, and Newt Gingrich, who once posed a significant threat to his burgeoning candidacy, has now surpassed him as the irrefutable front-runner. In short, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza will have to swim through a maelstrom of criticisms and sexual harassment accusations just to clear his name. And if he survives that -- which seems unlikely given the evidence stacked against him -- he’ll still need to convince Republican voters why he is the best candidate running for President. Unfortunately, as West implies, it seems the damage has already been done.
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