For long it has been apparent that the GOP Establishment suffers from a crippling dementia about Race. Longing for a Black savior – or at least a Black they can respect - they landed the party in the Michael Steel fiasco and the Colin Powell humiliation. It is far from clear they will be able to handle Obama’s inevitable playing the Race card in the election – indeed that they will not throw away the fruits of victory out of embarrassment.

Unfortunately it now appears a large slice of the Republican electorate suffers from the same syndrome. A white businessman with as flimsy a record as Herman Cain would not register in the Presidential polls.

Since his record is so slight what evidence there is has to be evaluated searchingly. Thus Rush Limbaugh was right to draw attention to Cain’s initial race-profiteering response to the ridiculous Perry ranch-name smear attempt.

H/T Diversity is Chaos for drawing my attention to Herman Cain's Failure as CEO of Godfather's Pizza By Jay Raskin OpEdNews.com

"Herman Cain bases his campaign on the idea that he was a successful CEO and manager at Godfather's Pizza. No reporter has investigated this claim.''...

It is hard to imagine that profits went up at this time. Godfather's Pizza fell from the 5th largest Pizza chain when Cain took over to the 11th largest Pizza chain by the time he left the company 15 years later.

Cain bought Godfather's Pizza in a management leveraged buyout. In general, management leveraged buyouts are a device that company managers use to defraud stockholders of company profits. In this case, I believe the only reason there is no fraud in this case is because Cain was unable to produce any profits in the years he was CEO at Godfather's pizza. In other words, it was a fraud scheme that failed due to Cain's inept management."

Raskin further asserts in the comments thread:

"When Pillsbury bought Godfather's Pizza in 1985, the company that sold it to them Diversifoods had predicted profits from 1986 through 1990. The company had been worth over $300 million when bought in 1983. The only year that the company did not make a profit was in 1985, the year before Cain arrived. The losses were due primarily to defending a lawsuit by franchisee operators. As soon as Pillsbury bought the company, they settled the lawsuit. The following month they appointed Cain. Cain inherited a company that was profitable and he was backed by a six billion dollar company Pillsbury. With all this in his favor, he still managed to run the company into the ground so that Pillsbury sold it to him for a mere $40 million two and a half years later."

Obviously Raskin is an anti-capitalist with a vicious streak, but the facts are

• There has been no triumphant flotation or resale of Godfather’s Pizza, unlike a number of other restaurant chain transactions.

• When Cain resigned as CEO in 1996 8 years after the leveraged buy out – aged only 51 - he went on to become CEO of the National Restaurant Association, a PR/Lobbying function. All subsequent positions have been low-stress board memberships, very likely acquired through tokenism.

When fairly young men are successful in transactions like leveraged buyouts, they generally go on to do more – like Mitt Romney. They do not become bureaucrats.

Has the Presidency become an Affirmative Action dumping ground?