Can Herman Cain survive by attacking his accusers?

The embattled GOP presidential frontrunner confronts his sexual harassment charges by lashing out at his accusers. Is Cain just making things worse?

GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain says Sharon Bialek, who accused him of inappropriate sexual conduct, is a liar, and insists that anyone else who accuses him is a liar as well.
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In a dramatic Tuesday news conference, Herman Cain charged that Sharon Bialek, one of several women accusing him of sexual misconduct, lied when she said he groped her 14 years ago. The GOP presidential frontrunner called Bialek's account "baseless, bogus and false," and said Bialek and three other women who have accused him of sexually harassing them in the 1990s are part of a coordinated attempt to get him to abandon his campaign, which he said "ain't gonna happen." Moments before Cain spoke, one of his previously anonymous accusers, Karen Kraushaar, went public, suggesting that all the accusers hold a joint press conference. Cain's chief of staff, Mark Block, dismissed Kraushaar's claims on Fox News by saying — apparently falsely — that Kraushaar's son works at Politico, which broke the story. (A journalist named Josh Kraushaar used to work at Politico, but left for National Journal last year. And he isn't related to Karen Kraushaar.) Is it smart for Cain to go after his accusers so aggressively?

Cain should expose his accusers' questionable motives: "If there is anyone more despised than a cad, it's a gold digger," says Daniel J. Flynn at Human Events. So Cain is smart to fight back against these "amorphous accusations," and against the reviled establishment media trumping up these charges to smear his campaign. Judging by Cain's enduring strength in polls, it's working.

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