South Carolina GOP Debate Covers Drugs, Obama and the Economy; Herman Cain Declared the Winner

If past political history is any judge ... then the Republican Party will select businessman Herman Cain as their candidate in 2012 to run for the presidency against incumbent Barack Obama. After all, the GOP voters in South Carolina primaries have been right on the GOP presidential candidate in every election since 1980 and the GOP voters in a focus group following last night's South Carolina GOP presidential debate OVERWHELMINGLY indicated that Herman Cain was the winner of the debate.

See for yourself:





It was a surreal event in many respects. There were five candidates on the stage at this debate: Rep. Ron Paul, Herman Cain, former governor Tim Pawlenty, former senator Rick Santorum and former governor Gary Johnson.

Herman Cain

• Ron Paul - Paul is like your crazy uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner. You're never quite sure what he's going to say in front of the kids ... and you're never quite sure if he's right in the head. Last night, Paul made a passionate defense of the need to legalize heroin. His rant seemed to get the largest audience response of the night.
• Herman Cain - The focus group says that he won the debate. I smiled when one of the focus group members noted that Cain was 'articulate'. White folks are still amazed when they see a Black man who knows how to correctly use verbs and adjectives in a sentence. Quite frankly, the best part of last night's debate for Cain was the Fox News focus group afterwards. He was the definite winner in the minds of those 29 folks.
• Tim Pawlenty - He had the highest profile of any participant in last night's debate. I thought that the others might pile on him ... but, Pawlenty managed to hold his own last night. His roughest moment came when he tried to squirm his way out of a question about 'Cap and Trade' legislation in Minnesota. It turns out that he was for it before he was against it.
• Rick Santorum - He is still a cultural warrior. He doesn't have many ideas on any of the economic or foreign police issues ... but, he had a lot to say last night about family values.



Gary Johnson

• Gary Johnson - I need to be honest. I had never seen or heard about Gary Johnson until last night. Who knew that he was a governor in New Mexico? Who knew that he admits to smoking marijuana and feels that marijuana use should be legalized? Who knew that he doesn't care for the reality shows of either Donald Trump or Sarah Palin? Who knew that one of his life goals is to climb the highest mountains on each of the 7 continents? These were all things that we learned during the debate last night!

Did any of you watch the South Carolina GOP debate?