Herman Cain

The results of last Saturday’s Florida straw poll sent a message to Washington, D.C. and the media establishment. “We the people” are still in charge of this country. The actual vote still matters, not just what the political and media pundits anticipate.

My winning total of 37 percent of the vote eclipsed the so-called two front-runners combined. Both campaign camps have tried to spin the results for other than what they really suggest. Namely, the citizen’s movement is bigger and more influential than most people recognize, and that message is more powerful than money.

Governors Romney and Perry spent a considerable amount of money trying to influence the outcome of the Florida straw poll. We rented a bus and did some bus tours, which gave me an opportunity to give a lot of speeches about my solutions on how to fix our nation’s crises, instead of more political rhetoric and ideas that all sound the same.

For example, Mitt Romney said during the last presidential debate that when he served as governor of Massachusetts, he didn’t inhale. His plan for economic growth and jobs suggests otherwise. It tries to incorporate tax policy, regulatory policy, trade policy, energy policy, labor policy, human capital policy and fiscal policy all in one plan, which makes it complex. Worst yet, his ideas pivot off of the current tax code.

Just like all of the other presidential primary candidates if they have a plan, they swap out one set of tax code loopholes for another set of loopholes. This keeps the lobbyists employed and the tax code growing, but nothing gets solved.

My 9-9-9 economic growth and jobs plan deals with economic growth and jobs. It starts with throwing out the existing tax code. Maybe this is why it fits on two pages instead of Mitt’s 160-page book. My plan can be crafted into legislation that I plan to get Congress to pass in the first 90 days of my administration. Mitt’s plan would require at least several pieces of big legislation, which would take a long time to get passed in Congress due to the complexity alone.

Our economy is on life support. It can’t afford to keep waiting.

One of my guiding principles is that, if the public understands it, they will support it and demand that Congress pass it. I now realize that I should have also said if they can read it first. I invite all of you to read Mitt’s 160-page book and then get back to me. Or, you can read my two-page plan, which is easy to read and understand.

After five presidential debates, many people are starting to notice that even though I may not be getting as much air time as other candidates, my responses are consistently about specific solutions on the major issues. The other candidates talk about the issues and offer the usual generic ideas for what we ought to do. If not that, they attack each other for past political missteps or what a problem should be called. Who cares what you call it? People want to hear about solutions.

My proposal to fix Social Security, for example, is to offer a personal retirement account option to younger workers patterned after the models used in Galveston County, Texas, and the nation of Chile. It has also been used successfully in 30 other countries, but you did not hear about any of that during the post-debate media coverage.

Although we are encouraged by the Florida straw polls results, we still have a lot of work to do and a long way to go in this campaign marathon. We are even more encouraged at how many people are starting to clearly see the difference between the usual political rhetoric and solutions that make sense.

“We the people” are not going to settle for more of the same in 2012.

Some people are thinking Cain.

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