I have a secret plan to make my other plan not suck. Trust me. (Steve Marcus/Reuters)
Oh, Herman. Herman, Herman, Herman.
Herman Cain was attacked at the last debate for the obvious point: his hyper-branded 9-9-9 plan is astonishingly regressive. A nine percent national sales tax would be a heavy blow to poor Americans, especially as a way to help pay for cutting tax rates on the rich to a mere nine percent. (It also would lead to massive deficits, according to people who bothered to do the math, but Cain doesn't believe in math.)
So what's Cain's response, and how ridiculous can he make it? Oh, pretty damn ridiculous:
CAIN: The other thing that they try to say – “well it’s going to be regressive on the poor.” No it’s not. We anticipated that attack, but I didn’t tell them how I was going to fix it yet. I wanted to wait until I get attacked on that for a while. We already have a plan for that. But I wanted to see if they would come at that. They thought it was going to be dead in the water. We are a compassionate nation. We do want to help those that are doing all they can to help themselves, but they might need a little bit of help. So we’re not going to throw the people at the poverty level under the bus. No, we’re not going to do that. But we’ve already made provisions for that, but I just haven’t told the public and my opponents about it yet.
All right, so this was all according to Herman Cain's secret plan, see? He wanted to see if he'd be attacked for proposing an asininely regressive tax structure that would hurt the poor and be a godsend for the rich. He meant for that to happen, but all along he really had a secret plan up his sleeve that would fix the very, very obvious flaw in his scheme. No really. Oh, and he's not going to tell you what it is, or which of his secret advisers came up with it, but he might later. Yeah, that's the ticket.
This is the kind of snake-oil salesmanship that will launch you to the pinnacle of the business world, apparently. Your ideas aren't bad, you're just secretly withholding just how awesome they really are. Then people will be sorry!
It's no "John McCain has a secret plan for getting us out of Iraq, but he's not going to tell you unless you elect him president", but it's a pretty good effort. Apparently Herman Cain is convinced he can win the GOP nomination by catering to the most gullible constituents. It's probably a good plan.