Assuming the Best

Among Republican Presidential candidates, Herman Cain and Mitt Romney currently seem to be in a tie for front runner. I'm interested in the notion Cain was farther ahead last week, after the first stories about his alleged sexual harassment emerged but before a few others reared their heads (nudge nudge) to make them seem credible. It seems safe to assume that most Republicans assumed it was a manufactured story and that Cain was just the victim of a smear campaign.

So here's what we can assume about Republican voters. They don't approve of a guy who spends his organization's money to solve a problem, like Mitt Romney did with health care in Massachusetts. They DO approve of a guy who spends his organization's money to HIDE a problem, like Cain did with these settlements.

This seems to me very similar to another aspect of the Republican mindset, the idea that you can "cure" someone of being gay. You can't of course. In fact, if you really pressed Republicans about this, they would not insist that homosexuality itself is a choice - after all, it would mean that all of them, at one point, chose heterosexuality. What IS a choice is whether you act gay. Ken Mehlman, for example, acted straight and was put in CHARGE of stuff. Nobody had a problem with Mark Foley until he was undeniably gay. Nobody has a problem with Rick Perry or Eric Cantor, because they're both deniably gay. Perry is probably taking it a little too far in the other direction.