Tiger Woods for president? Never mind, says GOP frontrunner Cain

by Emily Kay on Oct 16, 2011 5:16 PM EDT

The Republican frontrunner for president, Herman Cain, said Sunday he was just kidding when he suggested five years ago that the GOP should prep Tiger Woods for a presidential run in 2016.

"That was a joke. That was a joke, okay?" Cain, who leads Republican primary hopefuls according to Wednesday’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, told the Daily Caller. "Americans got to learn how to have a sense of humor, okay?"

Cain referred to a column he wrote for his own website in 2006, long before Woods’ 2009 sex scandal stripped him of what Cain at the time called the former ace's "character, discipline and leadership by example." The blog post sure didn’t sound like a joke at the time.

Tiger Woods for president in 2016? GOP frontrunner Herman Cain says he was just joking (Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

"Tiger will be 40 years old in 2016," Cain wrote. "The Republican Party should begin grooming him now for a run at the White House. His personal attributes and accomplishments on the golf course point to a candidate who will be a problem solver, not a politician."

Woods, Cain wrote at the time, could galvanize Americans the way Martin Luther King Jr. and Ronald Reagan had. The 2016 candidate should not come from inside the beltway, he said, but "from inside the fairway, for all of us.

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now there’s some news – just when did Herman Cain become the front runner ? In 2006, Cain was busier making silly media headlines writing columns and doing radio shows – not running for major political office.

If at first you don't secede, try try again

by courtgolf on Oct 16, 2011 8:33 PM EDT reply actions

He took the mantle of front-runner with Romney in GOP polls when Republican voters realized that both Bachmann and Perry are unelectable cranks. Cain has a solid resume as a businessman, but really, he has little experience dealing with the machine that is Washington and will therefore be dependent on the same set of corporate tools in Congress that we’d all (Republicans and Democrats and unaffiliated) would be wise to be rid of.

by Charles Boyer on Oct 17, 2011 8:42 AM EDT up reply actions