One of the things that needs to be noted about Herman Cain is that he is a conservative who knows how to handle the media. He knew just what to say about the Saturday Night Live skit on the GOP debates. As recounted by Dana Milbank (who seems to like the Hermanator, in spite of himself):

The next morning, the real Herman Cain was on the real Fox News with a real host, discussing the phony debate. "I think it's great!" he said of the pizza skit. "I'm going to use that in my next debate: If you vote for me, America, I will deliver."

Note to Sarah Palin: That's how it's done.

I go back and forth over the meaning of the Cain Mutiny (better known as the Florida straw poll), but I've got to say there is much to applaud in the straight-talking Mr. Cain's victory.

Still, I will never forget the look of bafflement on Cain's face when he was asked about the Palestinian right of return. It worries me. Because we have just seen nearly three years of on-the-job training in the White House, I am concerned about Cain's lack of political experience (on the other hand…). But I am not immune to his appeal and neither is Dorothy Rabinowitz:

The pundits busy divining the reasons Herman Cain won that Florida straw poll so handily can't be blamed — it was a compelling spectacle and a distinctly satisfying one as straw poll results go. To have listened to the candidate's prescriptions in his speech to the delegates Saturday was to see why. Everything he told the audience had been said, in one way or another, by most of the leading Republican candidates. The difference here was — is — Mr. Cain's unfailing capacity to speak as though from a core of fire deep inside him. An irresistible strength — as is the mordant humor he brings to the battle.

So it happens that he can deliver a steely jibe about defense cuts ("You don't put a bulls-eye on the backs of our men and women in uniform") or the way America's wars must be fought ("the mission is victory . . . If we are not in it to win it, we will not be in it") and make audiences feel they'd never heard anything so bracing.

This is no small achievement. And it's why the conventional explanation of the straw poll results — that it was all about the Republicans' dissatisfaction with the current crop of candidates — seems inadequate. It would be far closer to the truth to say that those straw poll delegates were responding to a voice whose fire had touched them, warmed them, spoken for them.

Oh, yeah, and this is the supposedly racist tea party!

I am also willing to bet that Mr. Cain would not need to be told this by Charles Schwab, founder of the eponymous investment firm:

We can spark an economic recovery by unleashing the job-creating power of business, especially small entrepreneurial businesses, which fuel economic and job growth quickly and efficiently. Indeed, it is the only way to pull ourselves out of this economic funk.

But doing so will require a consistent voice about confidence in businesses-small, large and in between. We cannot spend our way out of this. We cannot tax our way out of this. We cannot artificially stimulate our way out of this. We cannot regulate our way out of this. Shaming the successful or redistributing income won't get us out of this. We cannot fund our government coffers by following the "Buffett Rule," i.e., raising taxes on Americans earning more than $1 million a year.

What we can do-and absolutely must-is knock down all hurdles that create disincentives for investment in business.

Private enterprise works….

Herman Cain knows this, is a living example of the truth of this. That is another reason he won the Florida straw poll.