Herman Cain changes his tune

"It's a word on a rock.  End of story."

Well, that didn't take long...

Exactly one day after Herman Cain was on the Sunday news talkie circuit calling Rick Perry "insensitive" for failing to remove a racially-charged sign from the entrance to Perry's hunting ranch, Cain bristled at suggestions that he was "playing the race card."

Here's the vid.



Now, Cain says he wants to move on, to talk about energy and national security and our struggling economy.

Why the sudden change of heart?

Adam Serwer of Mother Jones magazine concludes that Cain has made the political calculation that to push the issue any further would be to risk backlash from the oh-so-sensitive Tea Party crowd.  After all, there is only one thing they hate more than our African-American president.  And that is being labelled as racists. 

Serwer could very well be right.  But I'm more inclined to think that Cain's cell phone was buzzing all Sunday, well into the wee hours. My hunch is that GOP kingmakers put the heat on him.  "Drop that N*ggerhead thing or we'll destroy you."

The last thing the GOP wants right now is for the racism issue to pop up.  They know they're vulnerable on that score.  And for the attack to come from within their own party...  No matter how low Obama's approval numbers got, a racism donnybrook would kill any GOP momentum faster than John Boehner could knock back an apple martini.

Cain, the political novice, probably cowed easily enough.  For a guy who cut his teeth selling pizza, he must feel he's swimming in deep water, now that he's running second to Mitt Romney in the GOP polls.

I doubt that this is the last we'll see of the racism issue in this campaign.  Rick Perry looks to be fading fast.  But there are plenty more racists in the GOP.  Thick as sand fleas on a beach, they are.