Businessman Herman Cain, the only African-American in the 2012 GOPprimary field, slammed Texas governor Rick Perry for maintaining a racially “insensitive” sign on the grounds of his leased hunting camp.
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In interviews about his own surging candidacy on both Fox News and ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday morning, Cain criticized Perry’s behavior recounted in a story published in the Washington Post on Sunday. Cain’s comments begin at the 2:22 mark inthe video above.
Both Cain and Perry are running for the GOP nod to challenge President Obama in 2012.
In the Post account, Perrybrought a number of friends and lawmakers toa hunting ground in West Texas with a rock placed at its entrance with the word “Niggerhead” on it. The Perry camp says that his family painted over the offensive word in the early 1980s, but Post reporting found eyewitnesses who saw the slur more recently.
“There isn’t a more vile, negative word than the N-word,” Cain said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Andfor him to leave it there as long as he did before he painted over it, it’s just plain insensitive to a lot of black people in thiscountry.”
On “This Week,” Cain didn’t hesitate to point to the slur when the show’s host, Christiane Amanpour, was more cautious.
“The name of the place was called niggerhead. That is very insenstive. I think that it shows a lot of insensitivity for a very long time.”
Also in the ABC interview,Cain defended his controversial comments that blacks were “brainwashed” into supporting Obama and the Democratic Party andthat some people were trying to institute sharia law in the American court system.
“If that word is inflammatory, that’s too bad,” he said of his “brainwashed” comment.“A lot of black people won’t even listen to someone who is conservative or who is Republican.”
As for sharia law, Cain defended his assertion that “little by little” it could takeover the U.S. justice system. “Call me crazy,” he said. “Some people would infuse sharia law in our court system if we allow that.”
Cain has become a more intriguing candidate on the national GOP stage since unexpectedly winning the Florida straw poll. He placed third among GOP primarycandidates in a Fox news poll this past week after Perry turned in a poor debate performance.
Watch Cain talk about thePost story on the Perry hunting ranch on ABC’s “This Week” below. The portion on the Perry ranch begins at 2:22.
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