Explaining Herman Cain's Emergence

Since I made this post, introducing Herman Cain as a potential to Romney and Perry, Cain has skyrocketed up the GOP presidential polls:

The public is doing just that. In recent national polls, following impressive debate performances and straw poll wins that caught the political establishment by surprise, Cain has suddenly risen to the top of the pack, running almost even with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

But as I suggested before:

If he really wants to make a run for this, he will aim for the transparency necessary to be a viable candidate. Until then, Herman Cain will be a bump in the road for the front runners. You cannot ignore potential skeletons in your closet and run for president. You will have people make you reveal that information as you rise a legitimate candidate. You should do your best to be prepared.

In the most recent debate, the pizzaman's 9-9-9 plan came under fire, and the media has started taking a deeper look into it:

But note that we said the “9-9-9” would happen eventually — and then only temporarily. That’s because it is only the second step of a planned three-step process. The first step would cut individual and corporate tax rates to a top 25 percent rate (down from a current high of 35 percent). Then the final step would replace all of the taxes — even the 9s — with a national sales tax, known by proponents as a “Fair Tax.”

(As denizens of Washington, we find this three-step process to be highly dubious. It takes years, even decades, to fundamentally overhaul the tax code. Herman Cain is going to do this three times in his presidency? But we digress.)

Other than the clear difficulties that he would have in trying to overhaul the tax code, there are other issues involved with revenue, but particularly in the tax rate of the people who can afford it the least:

On top of that, Cain would introduce the new sales tax, which would affect lower and moderate-income people who spend most of their income on purchases, not savings and investments. Depending on how you do the math, people now paying zero or negative taxes might be faced with a 27 percent tax on income.

In other words, while on paper Cain is promising a tax cut, in reality tens of millions of lower-income Americans would face tax increases.

His proposal seems unsustainable, unreasonable, and unfair. He's essentially going to cut into pockets that have nothing in them. There's a lot of danger in fiddling with the numbers and it seems as though his numbers are vastly different than those of others who've looked at his plans. On the whole, it looks like a plan that would reduce taxes on many individuals, but the his plan would also negatively affect those that have the least and have been most affected by the financial crisis and the consequential recession.

Then, why he's been so high in the polls? This has been his one draw, his one big plan, and it just doesn't add up. How are people saying that they're going to vote for him?

I'm not going to just write off Cain. He's clearly polling well and there's reason to believe he's a legitimate contender to Romney with those numbers. I just look at the actual facts, what he actually brings to the table, and I just don't see what his supporters see. I just don't see him being able to accomplish effectively what he's promising to bring forth.