Update 10:45p: I just got off the phone with Alice Stewart. She called to provide some context to her comments. She said she was in a rush when Jason Noble of The Des Moines Register called and was in the process of getting on a plane. She said she was distracted and should have asked him to wait on a statement. She said that while Mr. Cain had an important voice within the race, some good ideas and enthusiasm there are distinctions between Congresswoman Bachmann and Mr. Cain, especially in the area of abortion and marriage. She said she should have made those distinctions. She said Congresswoman Bachmann is prolife (for the record, I never thought that she wasn’t prolife… just asking for some clarity re. the Cain remarks).
Original post: I think Alice Stewart, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s communications director, was just a tad too eager to snap up Herman Cain supporters:
“We’ve seen a tremendous amount of calls and emails saying they’re shifting their support and asking what can they do,” Michele Bachmann campaign spokeswoman Alice Stewart said this afternoon. “We would be a natural fit for people who supported him.”
Cain and Bachmann share the same views on government spending, how to create jobs, marriage and abortion, Stewart said.
Did they really want to say that? Because we have to ask, which view on abortion and marriage? A federalist position which Herman Cain admitted to me in an interview a year ago? Then again Congresswoman Bachmann did say to Craig Robinson (on video) that it was a state issue and then denied saying it to me when I asked her about it. What am I supposed to believe?
Also Cain’s position on abortion has been all over the place. The she’s got to know that The FAMiLY Leader eliminated him from their short list for endorsements citing “a narrative of questions versus clarity on the key issues of life, marriage, foreign policy and presidential readiness.”
I don’t think this is a winning argument for her if she wants to maintain what support she has with Iowa’s social conservatives.
