A Register exclusive: a ride on Herman Cain’s bus

Herman Cain’s bus seems to be a mobile sanctuary.

After three hours of shaking hands at Saturday’s football game at Iowa State University with people from the tailgate parties to the skyboxes — not to mention the University of Iowa’s game that morning — Cain needed to recharge.

It’d been a rough few days for the campaign, despite Cain’s status at the top of polls, after he told an interviewer that he might in some cases accept a woman choosing whether to have an abortion. But on the bus, on the way to a high-profile candidate forum, Cain and top advisers wholesale jerseys betrayed little concern about the controversy.

Cain, age 65, climbed aboard the blue-and-red bus bearing his visage and bee-lined past the flatscreen TV, past the smaller TV in the galley and finally sat down on a bed in the back, in front of a third TV. The accordion door to the bedroom slid shut.

The window blinds on the bus were drawn tight for the ride from Ames to Des Moines, where Cain would join five other presidential candidates at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s forum.

Nathan Naidu, Cain’s traveling aide, slumped into a chair near the kitchen area, pulling over his eyes the bill of one of the ISU baseball caps the campaign bought for its afternoon appearance

J.D. Gordon, Cain’s vice president for communications atlanta braves jerseys and foreign policy adviser, half-relaxed on a couch while catching up on emails on his BlackBerry.

After the bus arrived at the Iowa State Fairgrounds for the forum, the accordion door slid open and Cain emerged with a bit more spring in his step.

Saturday marked his first day in Iowa in more than two months.

“I assure you that you’re going to see this bus here,” Cain said, surveying his mobile kingdom. “This is one of the best campaign vehicles we got.”

The campaign also leased another bus for a tour promoting cheap mlb jerseysCain’s recent memoir, “This is Herman Cain!” Commentators questioned why the candidate would promote a book when any serious candidate would be campaigning.

“We never stopped campaigning,” Cain said. “They don’t know our strategy and it’s not the one they want to impose on us.”

The bus sat outside the Knapp Learning Center, inside of which waited 1,000-plus of Iowa’s Christian conservatives. Most were staunchly against abortion.

Last week, CNN’s Piers Morgan prodded Cain about his views on abortion in a televised interview. Cain said that he was for abortion under “no circumstances.” But then he said that, in some rare cases, “it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make.”

Some conservatives condemned Cain for acknowledging jerseys wholesale that abortion could ever be an option. One, fellow candidate Rick Santorum, called Cain “quintessentially pro-choice.”

With national media watching, Saturday’s forum gave Cain an opportunity to make his abortion views crystal-clear and try to shed the controversy.

But Cain said he wasn’t too concerned.

“I don’t think it’s like, critical. I really don’t,” he said. “The ones who try to dig up — ‘Oh, I thought he was accused’ — I’m not going to worry about that.”

Cain said he didn’t think most people were really confused. It was pundits like Morgan, he said, who got it wrong.

“The part of the interview they didn’t play was: I am pro-life, from conception, abortions — no exceptions,” he said.

But surely Cain needed to address cheap jerseys the issue in some way, right?

He started to explain: “All I’m going to do is …”

But then Cain paused, his eyes floating upward to the TV. On it, Fox News showed clips of the candidates at a debate. Soon enough there was Cain, watching Cain.

An anchor’s voice spoke: “… might also be a political gamble, lacking a track record of success in past campaigns. So can this be a winning platform for the GOP nomination?”

Gordon walked over to the television.

The voice continued: “Let’s bring in our political panel now: Justin Sayfie, he’s the former spokesman for Jeb Bush…”

“Sayfie, I think he’s a Romney guy,” Gordon said. “Do you want to hear what these guys say?”
http://benniscape.darkbb.com/t371-a-register-exclusive-a-ride-on-herman-cains-bus
“Nope!” Cain said confidently, as Gordon lowered the volume. They both shared a laugh as the campaign tuned out the critics.

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Cain said.