His latest web video may feature a stylized shot of his campaign aide Mark Block smoking a cigarette over some catchy patriotic pop music, but Herman Cain wants kids to know that kids should stay away from tobacco.
“Smoking is not a cool thing to do,” he said on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, adding that he has “never smoked and I have encouraged people not to smoke.”
As head of the National Restaurant Association, the industry’s chief lobbying organization, Cain worked closely with big tobacco companies on a number of shared goals, including stopping smoking bans in restaurants.
It was the first of several clarifications for host Bob Schieffer. Cain was also asked about his all-over-the-map language on abortion.
Cain said he is “pro life from conception, period.” Asked whether that meant even in case of rape, incest, or where the health of the mother is at risk, he replied “Correct. That’s my position.”
But that answer doesn’t entirely clear up the ongoing confusion over whether Cain personally believes abortion shouldn’t be employed in those circumstances or whether he believes it should be illegal. In past interviews he has spoken of a woman and her family’s “choice” in such a scenario.
As for his comments on the campaign trail that Planned Parenthood is committing “genocide” against the black community, Cain said he was dead serious.
“I still stand by that,” he said. “If people go back and look at the history and look at Margaret Sanger’s own words thats exactly where that came from.”
Schieffer also pressed him on his increasingly violent rhetoric on the border. Cain, who has jumped between identifying his call for an electric border fence as a joke and a serious plan, called it an “overexaggeration” on Sunday and said that his proposed barrier would be “not necessarily electric.”
As for his past call for an alligator-filled moat, Cain said “that was a joke too. That was totally in jest, Bob.”
On foreign policy, Cain said he was against President Obama’s announced withdrawal from Iraq, warning that it would create a “power vacuum.” When asked by Schieffer if he disagreed with President Bush then, since it was the 43rd president who negotiated the legally binding timetable for withdrawal in 2008, Cain said his disdain was bipartisan.
“It was irresponsible for George Bush to set a date certain,” he said.
