Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll this weekend with 37% of the vote.  Cain’s Facebook page, which I checked out following the news of his victory, is full of people who consider him a breath of fresh air.  Most of them say they can’t stand Perry or Romney, but that Cain tells it like it is.

Overlooked, as usual, is that Cain himself doesn’t feel that way about Romney, whom he endorsed in 2008.  D’oh.

Cain is more or less the same as the rest of the pack in terms of economic policy; they all seem to think tax reform is the solution to the aftermath of the financial crisis.  Yes, they talk about regulation, too.  But again, their solutions are from 1983.  No mention of the source of the financial crisis, or why we keep having these financial bubbles and business cycles.  (Here’s a hint.)  No, it’s just a matter of changing our tax policy.

I’m not saying Cain supporters are stupid or dense.  I am saying they are not looking at their man honestly, or perhaps do not know everything they should about him.  And I don’t expect all Americans to understand what causes the business cycle.  But for heaven’s sake, they should at least look into it (see the business cycle section).  It’s kind of important.

Cain’s Florida straw poll victory means that 37% of participants believe the following:

1) Supporting TARP is A-OK.
2) Endorsing Mitt Romney is A-OK.
3) Claiming as late as 2006 that there was no housing bubble, that the economy was fine, that skeptics were just people who hated George W. Bush, and being totally taken by surprise by the Panic of 2008, is A-OK, and this is just the person we need in charge.

For supporting evidence for these and other problems with Cain, click here.

For the five-minute case against Cain, see below.