Wow. This is Herman Cain's week, huh?

I know I just blogged about the sexual harassment allegations, but wait! There's more!  In addition to that, there's also some information that has come out about possible IRS and FEC violations.  Mark Block (the Cigarette-Smoking Man from the now-viral ad and a Cain campaign aide) ran a tax-exempt non-profit organization with another current Cain aide, Linda Hansen, which apparently fronted the nascent campaign a good bunch of cash to get underway.

This is a no-no for a tax-exempt non-profit to do from both IRS and FEC rules. This could mean some trouble for the Cain Campaign legally (gee, I guess it's lucky, then, that the allegations about the sexual harassment deal have been a windfall for for the Hermanator, amirite?)

If anything, the two scandals and the Cain campaign's handling of them may seem to reinforce the "outsider" and "unorthodox" labels the campaign and the candidate boldly wear. But what's weird about that is that Herman Cain isn't that much of an outsider. The National Restaurant Association does lobbying on behalf of the food service industry regarding such topics as mandatory sick time requirements and the health care laws (guess in whose favor?)  He was in lobbying through the 1990's and was an economic advisor to the Dole/Kemp 1996 presidential campaign, in addition to running briefly as a GOP presidential contender in 2000 and for US Senate in 2004.  So it's not like he's a complete naif.

I've read from other observers that the Cain campaign had 10 days to sort out a response to the sexual harassment story.  This isn't quite the case. They had since Cain knew there was a problem back in 1990-whatever when he was informed "One (or more) or your employees has an issue with you". I find it really hard to believe that in this day and age, a candidate doesn't do some degree of "self-vetting".  If the candidate doesn't think to do it, some nice person advising him should think to ask, "So? Any bodies we should worry about resurfacing?"   That the story changed as many times within the course of 48 hours (now, it appears one of the accusers may want to come forward publicly) clearly suggests this introspection never took place.

The campaign financing mess was also avoidable if everyone knew what they were doing--unless they meant to be doing the thing they shouldn't be doing! Amateur-hour?  Or, a case of cock-sure confidence that the campaign wasn't supposed to get this level of scrutiny? 

In any case, I want to reiterate--the Cain Campaign looks to be a victim of the in-house drive-by. These two love-taps they got from the media were probably dropped off courtesy of a GOP operative who wants a more conventional candidate to face Obama. This only benefits the liberal media as comic relief, since it has nothing to do with HELLLLOOOO! the issues, which is kind of what liberals really care about, anyway.