What it was was a poor attempt to entrap the still too trusting Herman Cain to make it appear that his position on abortion is incoherent.
The
transcript of the controversial interchange shows Herman immediately grasped Piers Morgan's attempt to bait and switch when Herman TWICE interjects the comment "you're mixing two things," namely "bringing up the baby as her own" and "abortion."
The media and the left, like Ed Kilgore of The New Republic
here, are hoping that if they repeat their lie enough that we'll all believe it.
Piers Morgan starts talking about abortion, and suddenly introduces a hypothetical about raising a child who was conceived in a rape "as her own":
MORGAN: Abortion. What's your view of abortion?
CAIN: I believe that life begins at conception. And abortion under no circumstances. And here's why --
MORGAN: No circumstances?"
CAIN: No circumstances.
MORGAN: Because many of your fellow candidates -- some of them qualify that.
CAIN: They qualify but --
MORGAN: Rape and incest.
CAIN: Rape and incest.
MORGAN: Are you honestly saying -- again, it's a tricky question, I know.
CAIN: Ask the tricky question.
MORGAN: But you've had children, grandchildren. If one of your female children, grand children was raped, you would honestly want her to bring up that baby as her own?
CAIN: You're mixing two things here, Piers?
MORGAN: Why?
CAIN: You're mixing --
MORGAN: That's what it comes down to.
CAIN: No, it comes down to it's not the government's role or anybody else's role to make that decision. Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidents, you're not talking about that big a number. So what I'm saying is it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make.
Not me as president, not some politician, not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family. And whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn't have to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive issue.
MORGAN: By expressing the view that you expressed, you are effectively -- you might be president. You can't hide behind now the mask, if you don't mind me saying, of being the pizza guy. You might be the president of United States of America. So your views on these things become exponentially massively more important. They become a directive to the nation.
CAIN: No they don't. I can have an opinion on an issue without it being a directive on the nation. The government shouldn't be trying to tell people everything to do, especially when it comes to social decisions that they need to make.
MORGAN: That's a very interesting departure --
CAIN: Yes.
MORGAN: -- from the normal politics.
CAIN: Exactly.
There is absolutely nothing controversial here about Herman Cain saying a president has no business telling people to raise such a child as their own.
And Rick Santorum should be ashamed of himself for piling on.
Incidentally, Herman is correct about the relative rarity of the adoption question:
statistics show just under 250,000 total children per year waiting to be adopted and adopted, in about equal numbers.
That's because our advanced civilization murders about
1,210,000 unborn children every year.