Herman Cain for President: Courting the Christian Right

A message to all members of Teabook

Herman Cain, former pizza chain CEO, talk radio host and Kansas City Fed Chairman, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for U.S. president on Saturday in Atlanta.

Cain describes himself as a social and fiscal conservative.


(Photo: REUTERS / Brian Snyder)

Businessman and likely Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaks at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation's "Presidential Summit on Spending and Job Creation" in Manchester, New Hampshire April 29, 2011.


Herman Cain for President: Courting the Christian Right

"America craves for real solutions to the problems we face. That's why I'm running for President of the United States!" Cain said in a video on his website on Saturday.

"[The United States] will not accept debt, nor a mantle of mediocrity and she surely will never, ever go quietly into the night. Not on our watch," he said.



Former Pizza Executive Joins Presidential Race

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
David Goldman/Associated Press
Herman Cain announces his run for Republican candidate for president at a rally on Saturday in Atlanta.
Herman Cain, who made his fortune pitching soda, burgers and pizza before turning to politics, declared himself a candidate on Saturday for something that few others seem to want these days: the Republican nomination for president in 2012.

At a noontime rally at a park in Atlanta, his hometown, Mr. Cain, 65, whose conservative fiscal credentials have made him a favorite among some Tea Party backers, promised “a real vision” to confront the nation’s growing economic and foreign policy problems.

And he vowed to prove wrong the “doubting Thomases” who regard him as a long shot. “I’m not running for second!” he shouted to cheers from several thousand supporters, as he laid out “the Cain doctrine” for promoting economic growth and protecting national security.



In a stylish video that accompanied his announcement, Mr. Cain offered few specific proposals but instead relied on sweeping, Reaganesque themes and allusions to God’s role in America as he promised what he called “a new American dream.”

“We can turn this country around,” he said. “We will make this country great again.”

Mr. Cain, who has never held public office, hopes to leap headlong into a Republican race that is as notable for who is not running as who is.

Big names like Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor; Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi; and Donald J. Trump, the businessman and reality TV star, recently announced that they would not seek the Republican nomination to run in the general election next year against President Obama.

Sarah Palin, a former governor of Alaska, has yet to declare her intentions. But the rest of the field is slowly coming together. Tim Pawlenty, a former governor of Minnesota, is scheduled to declare his candidacy on Monday in Iowa. Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has opened an exploratory campaign and is aggressively raising money. Jon M. Huntsman, a former Utah governor and United States ambassador to China, is considering entering the race and Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana has said he will announce his plans soon.

While other possible contenders have skipped many of the early events this year, Mr. Cain has been aggressively crisscrossing the country and trying to build name recognition among a public more familiar with the company he once ran, Godfather’s Pizza, than with the candidate himself.