Assault on the Citadel

National Review, July 4, 2005 by Michael Potemra

* In 2004, former Godfather's Pizza chairman Herman Cain ran a spirited campaign for the GOP nomination for Georgia's U.S. Senate seat; in They Think You're Stupid: Why Democrats Lost Your Vote and What Republicans Must Do to Keep It (Stroud & Hall, 216 pp., $24.95), he now offers equally spirited advice to America's current majority party.

The Democrats are losing support because of their intellectual bankruptcy, which betrays itself in their resort to low-road attacks. (During the Senate campaign, Rev. Joseph Lowery, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, criticized Cain for running as a Republican, and commented: "There's a myth going around that to be rich and famous you have to be Republican ... And some colored folks are falling for that. No black people, but some colored folks." Can you imagine a GOP politician getting away with that blatantly racist smear?) Republicans, writes Cain, need to hang tough in enacting their economic-freedom agenda, because prosperous voters will be loyal voters: "The success of President Reagan's fiscal policies allowed millions of citizens to build first-generation financial security and wealth and in the process created lifetime supporters of the Republican party. I am one of them." He also suggests a significant change in the meaning of "GOP," from "Grand Old Party" to "Government Of the People"--to make clear that Republicans' support for low-tax, small-government policies is grounded not in a class bias toward the wealthy but in respect for the decisions of individual citizens. One of the highlights of this inspiring book is an appendix containing Cain's 2003 sermon at Dr. Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral; the man's political message is of a piece with his sense of life's basic purpose.