Incoherent

RS McCain declares Herman Cain's recent stumble into the abortion-rights twilight zone over. Cain's pro-life bona fides have been confirmed and that's the end of the story for McCain, who diagnoses the controversy (a word McCain places in quotes, but I don't) as more a result of Cain's failure to recognize "gotcha" questions than of the substance of his answers:

The actual problem, as I see it, is that Cain wants to seem thoughtful and engaged during interviews like this, and so he responds to questions with something more than talking points, without stopping to think: “Hey, this guy’s trying to push me into a corner and get me in trouble.” 

Well, yes. But what bothered me about Cain's various statements about possible exceptions to the unborn's right to life was the incoherence of his answers to easy questions. This is a problem, regardless of his stand on abortion, hostage crises, or tax reform. It strongly implies incoherence of thought.

Now Mr. Cain agrees, when asked, that abortion "should not be a part of the political discussion." Really? So he agrees with Mitch Daniels that we ought to declare a truce on social issues? Or does he (most likely) believe something entirely different? It's getting hard to take his words seriously, but not because he's insincere or deliberately deceptive. He's just incoherent.

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Mark Steyn on what's behind the incoherence: apathy:

But the ‘stan shtick is a glimpse of the greater truth – that there are whole areas of public policy in which he simply has no interest. None. You ask him a question and from the recesses of his mind swim up half-recalled phrases from some panel discussion he caught once long ago, and he hopes he grabs the conservative line (“I’m proud to stand by Israel”, “we don’t negotiate with terrorists”, “life begins at conception”, whatever) but just as often he doesn’t (with Gretchen Carlson this morning: “No, abortion should not be a part of the political discussion”).

RTR.

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