Cain Agrees With Obama on Gay Soldier's Booing
A day after President Barack Obama rebuked Republican presidential candidates for staying silent after the booing of a gay soldier’s question on “don’t ask, don’t tell” at a recent GOP debate, Herman Cain admitted it would have been appropriate for him to respond to it.
Cain, former Godfather's Pizza CEO, first clarified that those on stage at the Sept. 22 Republican debate had certain limitations. “Well, the thing that’s being overlooked is that, in the heat of a debate, when you have exactly 60 seconds to answer any question, you know, taking that time to try and figure out why they were booing,” he said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” program Sunday.
“Maybe they were booing the whole ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ repeal more so than booing that soldier. But we didn’t know that,” Cain said.
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Some audience members at the debate booed after the soldier asked if any of the GOP candidates would seek to thwart the newly given rights of gays and lesbians in uniform. The recent repeal of DADT allows gays and lesbians to serve openly in the U.S. military.
Pressed if he should have defended the soldier, Cain agreed that “in retrospect because of the controversy and the different ways it was interpreted” he should have responded to the booing, particularly if it was directed toward someone serving the country.
The support of Republican voters for Cain recently shot up. While he was supported by just six percent of voters in a Fox News poll in August, his score tripled to 17 percent, giving him third place in another Fox poll in September.
At Saturday’s dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, an influential gay rights group, Obama condemned the silence of his Republican rivals. “We don’t believe in the kind of smallness that says it’s okay for a stage full of political leaders – one of whom could end up being the President of the United States – being silent when an American soldier is booed,” the president said.
“You want to be commander in chief?” Obama asked at the dinner with 3,000 attendees. “You can start by standing up for the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States, even when it’s not politically convenient.”
Republican Sen. John McCain from Arizona also agreed with Obama. He told CBS’ “Face The Nation” program Sunday that the candidates at the debate should have responded to the booing. “It’s hard to react sometimes. But I’m sure… I would bet that every Republican on that stage did not agree with that kind of behavior.”
However, former Vice President Dick Cheney didn’t agree with Obama’s criticism. “I’m a little bit leery of the notion that somehow we ought to go hammer the Republican candidates because they didn’t respond to booing in the audience,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “When you’re in a political campaign and debates, you know, people boo a lot of things. And I’m not sure that it was all focused specifically on that particular issue.”
