In a conference call this morning, Herman Cain told his senior staff that he is “reassessing” whether to remain in the race. He told them he will make his final decision “over the next several days.”
There was some initial buzz that said the report was mistaken for merely reassessing staffing issues, but Cain's chief of staff, Mark Block, confirmed to ABC that the reassessment is, indeed, about his candidacy.
Of course, it wouldn't be unprecedented for the Cain team to send out confusing, contradictory statements in the next few hours.
This latest allegation was awfully tough to fight back.
I didn't think there was nearly enough to condemn him in the first series of allegations, but those phone calls to Ginger White are tough to talk away. There isn't just saving a candidacy to think about; there's saving a marriage.
UPDATE: National Review has the full transcript of the conference call, which includes this bit from Cain reacting to the Ginger White allegations.
"Obviously, this is cause for reassessment,” he continued. “As you know, during the summer we had to make some reassessments based upon our financial situation. We were able to hang in there; we reassessed the situation and kept on going. We also did a reassessment after the Iowa straw poll and we made another reassessment after the Florida straw poll.
When the previous two accusations, false accusations, came about, we made another assessment. The way we handled those was, we continued on with our schedule. We made an assessment about what was going to happen to our support. But our supporters, and even some folks that we didn’t have as supporters, they stood with us, and they showed it, not only in terms of their verbal support, they showed it in terms of their dollars.”
“Now, with this latest one, we have to do an assessment as to whether or not this is going to create too much of a cloud, in some people’s minds, as to whether or not they would be able to support us going forth.”
