It's been two years since allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced, but Herman Cain is finally fighting back.
The former Republican presidential hopeful gave RealClearReligion an exclusive look at evidence he'll be using in a soon-to-be published column after he spoke to a Young Americans for Freedom chapter of Young America's Foundation on DePaul University's campus Monday in Chicago.
Cain said if he challenged the allegations at the time, "it would have been a huge distraction." A presidential campaign "is like drinking from a fire hydrant" and so is a bad time to give a considered response scandalous allegations of that nature.
Cain blamed the media for not "doing their due diligence." He insisted all three women who accused him are "liars."
The first charges that were reported, by a still-anonymous woman, "went to the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] and were dismissed," Cain said.
Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred held a press conference for her client, Sharon Bialek, who accused Cain of groping her over a decade ago. During that presser, Allred waved around alleged affidavits that she said corroborated her client's story. Cain said that no one has even seen Allred's affidavits.
That seemed a stretch -- an attorney waiving affidavits around at a press conference and reporters not insisting on verifying those documents. But after some digging, nothing. A search for it on the Smoking Gun website reveals a big goose egg, for instance.
As for the third woman, Ginger White, who accused Cain of an affair, Cain said she was in court for libel at the same time he ended his campaign. "She ultimately was found guilty and was assessed a judgment," he told me with a good helping of contempt for the media for under-reporting it.
Then he speculated as to who may have orchestrated the allegations: the Devil.
"It made me realize that there was a force bigger than right," Cain said.
But that doesn't mean Cain has given up. Nowadays, Cain fights against the Evil One from the pulpit. Cain has been a member of the same Baptist church in Atlanta -- "a church in the hood" -- since he was 10, where he now serves as an associate pastor.
Cain preaches that the Devil is "determined to destroy our culture" and that "the family is at the center of our culture and the center of the family is its religious beliefs."
A recent sermon of his is entitled: "Don't Give Up, Get Up!" He told the congregation that there are three ways to battle "give-up-itis. You get down on your knees and pray, you write down your blessings, and you turn down the noise in your life." The noise in Cain's life is considerably softer than it was two years ago, but he hasn't called it in just yet.
