Given his own financial difficulties, should Mark Block really be trusted?<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qhm-22Q0PuM">The Herman Cain</a>/YouTube
Herman Cain’s first response to Tuesday’s allegation of sexual assault from a former National Restaurant Association employee was to blame the media for distracting America’s attention from his 9-9-9 tax plan. Within a few hours, he’d apparently reconsidered this tactic, and tried a new one: The accuser, Sharon Bialek, can’t be trusted because she went broke a couple times. As spokesman J.D. Gordon argued in a statement, “his opponents convinced a woman with a long history of financial difficulties, including personal bankruptcy, to falsely accuse the Republican frontrunner of events occurring over a decade ago for which there is no record, nor was there ever even a complaint filed.”
If Gordon has any evidence that any of Cain’s opponents were behind anything that’s happened in the last week—and Bialek’s allegations specifically—he hasn’t managed to produce it. But more absurd is the implication that Bialek shouldn’t be trusted simply because she’s had a shaky financial history. (The New York Post‘s Andrea Peyser, taking Gordon’s statement to its logical conclusion, called Bialek a “gold digger” on Tuesday.)
Ignoring the fact that most of the two million Americans who file for person bankruptcy each year aren’t compelled, as a consequence, to then make unsubstantiated allegations of sexual assault, the “broke people can’t be trusted” card is an odd one for Cain to play given the individuals he happens to surround himself with. For instance, here’s a sentence I pulled totally at random from an Associated Press story about Herman Cain’s chief of staff, Mark Block: “Records show Block has faced foreclosure on his home, a tax warrant by the Internal Revenue Service and a lawsuit for an unpaid bill. He also acknowledges he was arrested twice for drunken driving.” The story also mentions that after dropping out of politics, Block went broke and was forced to stock shelves at Target.
Given Block’s long history of financial difficulties, including racking up $62,000 in debt with his non-profit, going broke, receiving a tax warrant from the IRS, and foreclosure scare, can we really trust him to tell the truth to the American people?
(Alternatively, perhaps nitpicking over Bialek’s personal finances is a total non-sequitur. Just throwing that out there.)
