STREAM EXCLUSIVE ORIGINALS

CBS Kind Of Disses GOP Presidential Candidate Herman Cain

GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain's placement in key poll is ignored by CBS News

Iowa is a critical early caucus state and very important to Republican presidential candidates who hope to win the hearts and votes of some of the nation’s most conservative voters. In a first-of-the-season Iowa poll of GOP contenders, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain placed first, second and third, respectively.

But on CBS’s Face the Nation this week, when moderator Bob Schieffer announced the poll’s results, he neglected to mention Cain.

“Iowans woke to the news this morning that you and Mitt Romney are the big favorites among Iowa caucus goers. Iowa, is of course, the first contest for the Republican nomination,” Schieffer told Bachmann, who was a guest on the show. “The polls show that Romney has 23 percent, you have 22 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus five percent. That means the two of you are statistically tied. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are next with seven percent. Here’s the big surprise: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has put in a lot of time and effort out there, is behind even Gingrich.”

The real surprise may in fact be that Cain received support from 10 percent of caucus-goers, while the others Schieffer mentioned were in the single digits.

CBS later issued an apology.

“In this morning’s Face the Nation, we inadvertently omitted Herman Cain’s third place finish in the Des Moines Register poll,” CBS spokeswoman Elizabeth Wasden told The Daily Caller. “We apologize for the error.”

Cain, who has never held political office, has lately gotten a little prickly with reporters. Last week, he said that reporters who believed him when he said that as president he’d never sign a bill longer than three pages were being “idiotic.”


“I will be a president, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, ‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’” Cain said, the Los Angeles Times reports. “This is why you heard me say bills will be bills that you and I can understand. I said in one presentation about a month ago, ‘No bill is going to longer than three pages.’ Remember that? Some of these idiotic reporters thought I was serious. The joke’s on them. The message was short bills. Understandable bills. No, it’s not literally going to be three pages. The executive summary will be three pages.”


Cain also slammed The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s parody of his three-page-bill declaration for being racist. Quoting his grandfather, Cain said, “I does not care. I does not care.” But if he didn’t care, why not simply ignore Stewart? Does Herman Cain need to develop a thicker skin?

(Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

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