You really have to feel for Herman Cain because it seems that people are always misunderstanding his perfectly consistent and reasonable statements.
Like how his 9-9-9 plan will not raise taxes on the poor because he has a super-secret solution that he just hasn’t told anyone about or how just because he said he wouldn’t allow any Muslims to serve in his administration, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t allow Muslims to serve in his administration.
Yesterday Cain made news again after saying that it is not the “government’s role, or anybody else’s role” to make the decision about whether to have an abortion in cases of rape or incest.
That statement made Religious Right activists question Cain’s anti-choice bona fides, to which he responded with a tweet declaring that he was “100% pro-life. End of story.”
That, of course, was not the end of the story because it directly contradicted what Cain had just said. So now Cain is out there trying to set the record straight by explaining that he believes that abortion ought to be illegal in all circumstances … but that the decision to break the law and get an abortion is none of the government’s business:
FOX HOST MARTHA MACCALLUM: Do you believe that abortion should be legal in this country for families who want to make that decision [to abort]?
CAIN: No. I do not believe abortion should be legal in this country, if that’s the question.
MACCALLUM: So then you’re saying that if those circumstances come up and the family does make that decision, that they decide that that is the best thing for this young person or she decides that on her own, then if that’s what they decided, then it would be an illegal abortion that they would seek.
CAIN: It would be an illegal abortion! Look, abortion should not be legal — that is clear — but if that family made a decision to break the law, that’s their decision.
In attempting to clarify his position, Cain has done the opposite and is only generating more confusion.
If the government outlaws abortion, then obviously a decision about whether to break the law and get an abortion anyway is not a situation where the government “shouldn’t try to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive decision” … mainly because the government has already made that decision for them by outlawing abortion.
Is this really Cain’s position: that in situations where a family was deciding whether or not to break the law, it is none of the government’s business to tell them what to do?
Here is helpful tip for Cain to consider: if people are repeatedly asking you to clarify your incoherent positions and your clarifications only induce further confusion, then just maybe it is not everyone else that is woefully misinformed.
