Herman Cain now has Secret Service protection, but what’s going to keep him safe from the backlash that his “unorthodox” campaign is provoking from New Hampshire to Florida?
Perhaps even more politically significant than his new security detail was Cain’s refusal yesterday to participate in a staple of primary politics — an editorial board meeting with the New Hampshire Union Leader, the state’s most important newspaper.
The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO backed out of the previously-scheduled session just days after a similar newspaper interview in Wisconsin led to an embarrassing video of Cain stumbling through an answer on his stance on Libya.
The Union Leader’s publisher Joe McQuaid all but dismissed Cain as a viable candidate in the pages of his own paper this morning: “I don’t think he’s going anywhere from here at this point,” he said.
The interview with Howard Cain that wasn't makes headlines | New Hampshire NEWS0605
Cain was able to make it to a taping of “The Late Show” with David Letterman on Thursday night. It was the first venue where Cain was protected by the Secret Service.
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Meanwhile, the scrutiny on Newt Gingrich over his work with the mortgage giant Freddie Mac has intensified all week. In an interview last night with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, Gingrich said he was “not sure the exact amount” he was paid by the company but insisted: “I do no lobbying of any kind. I never have.”
At a campaign stop in Jacksonville, Fla., yesterday, Gingrich told his audience that he would “cheerfully answer every single question” reporters had. As ABC’s Russell Goldman notes, however, following the event he refused to answer any questions about the work he did for mortgage company.
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On Fox News last night, Gingrich said that he had asked associates to look into the payments he received and hinted that he might release more documentation as early as today.
And amid all of the sound and fury of the Republican primary race, the mostly likely eventual GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, has been waging a relatively quiet campaign. But Democrats have seized on a series of Boston Globe stories detailing how, at the end of his term as governor, Romney’s aides wiped e-mail records and purchased computer hard drives.
As the Globe’s Matt Viser and Michael Levenson report, “The Romney campaign yesterday declined requests to explain why the hard drives were purchased, leaving it unclear whether they were trying to keep information confidential. Nor did the campaign respond to questions about whether Romney had used a computer that contained one of the purchased hard drives. … The Romney campaign yesterday responded to the disclosure by filing a request under the state’s public records law for information about contacts between the office of Patrick, a Democrat, and the campaign of President Obama.”
Past staffs recall no computer buybacks - Nation - The Boston Globe
DEMOCRATIC COUNTERPROGRAMMING. “The Democratic National Committee is now requesting records sent during Gov. Mitt Romney’s tenure in office in Massachusetts, filing a Freedom of Information Act request just hours after Romney’s campaign used the same means to request records of correspondence between President Obama’s re-election staff and current Massachusetts’ Gov. Deval Patrick,” ABC’s Emily Friedman notes. “According to the DNC, the formal paperwork was filed because, ‘Americans deserve to know whether the Romney administration deliberately sought to delete public records in anticipation of requests regarding Gov. Romney’s record on a range of issues – from abortion to health care – and how he reached policy decisions when in office.’”
Democrats Request Records from Romney’s Governorship - ABC News
ROMNEY ON THE TRAIL: Today Romney is in New Hampshire. He will attend a Santa Fund Luncheon – co-hosted by the New Hampshire Union Leader and the Salvation Army followed by a town hall later in the afternoon in Manchester.
UNNECESSARY ROUGHNESS: ABC’s Matthew Jaffe explores presidential candidate security, noting that “life on the campaign trail can be intense, unforgiving and even confrontational — but one thing it is never supposed to be is physical, a fact that appears to have been forgotten by some campaigns this year as they struggle to cope with the media spotlight.”
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ON TODAY’S “TOP LINE”: AN ILLINOIS CONGRESSIONAL DUO. ABC’s Rick Klein and Zach Wolf sit down with Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Illinois, and his Republican counterpart from the Land of Lincoln, Rep. Adam Kinzinger. Watch “Top Line” LIVE at 12:00 p.m. Eastern.
TopLine: Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., and economist Steve Bell | Video - ABC News
CONSERVATIVE GROUP PUTS PRESSURE ON KAGAN. The advocacy group, ForAmerica, has released a new web video to more than 300,000 supporters and 1.5 million-plus Facebook fans calling on Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself from hearings on President Obama’s health care law.
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http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/the-week-of-living-dangerously-the-note/