CAIN CAMPAIGN: TIME TO DEPLOY THE HORNDOGS' WIVES!

Oh, this just gets more bizarre: Herman Cain -- who, way back in May, months before his sex scandal, invoked Clarence Thomas in an interview and said, "I'm ready for the same high-tech lynching that he went through -- for the good of this country" -- has now rolled out not one but two wives of prominent Republican horndogs to try to shore up his campaign.

Wife #1 is, in fact, Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginni, who conducts the softest softball interview ever with Cain for the Daily Caller:





Ginni T doesn't appear on camera and her questions appear as subtitles, but the interview appears (at the link) under her byline. Her first question: "Are reporters setting you up to be 'guilty until proven innocent'?"

But if that isn't embarrassing enough, here's a pro-Cain op-ed by Mark Sanford's wronged wife, Jenni, from the South Carolina newspaper The State:

... Herman Cain's lack of political experience makes him willing to propose bold ideas, to try new solutions to the challenges that face our nation. There's a sense among the people disconnected from the system (myself included) that our political leaders aren't listening, or can't feel our pain. Cain clearly isn’t part of the permanent political class, because he has proposed a tax reform that would simplify our tax code, ending deductions and closing loopholes. Details aside, he is willing to think big, to challenge the status quo. Sadly, we now get to watch as the players who make up the system try to rip him to pieces.

... let's not forget the media. Over-focused as they are on the small, the controversial and the sensational, they will focus on the arrows being thrown at candidates and their proposals instead of challenging others to propose new solutions. If the media would spend more time honestly airing detail on the thoughtful proposals that are put forth instead of highlighting the best debate quips or the newest allegations, perhaps we might have a truly interesting race with serious choices. Sadly, the media give air to the attacks, thus spurring more attacks.
I know this story well. A "fresh face" appears on the political scene and puts forth new proposals that challenge the status quo and then is attacked viciously on his proposals and then his character....

In other words: being set up on sex charges simply because his tax plan is so freaking awesome. Yeah, right -- that must be the reason.

I don't know what to make of Sanford's decision to throw herself into this. (Does she hate Romney, or Perry, or Rove?) But the participation of Ginni Thomas intrigues me, because she's an apparatchik, which means her refusal to throw the seemingly drowning Cain an anvil is yet another sign that the hardcore insider wingnuts aren't going to fall in line behind Romney with anything resembling the dutifulness a lot of observers seem to expect. In fact, I'm thinking "conservative crack-up." Maybe it's too much to hope that the Cain affair is going to create permanent fissures on the right, but we can dream, can't we?