Explaining last gaffe, Cain stumbles again

GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain committed another potentially damaging foreign policy gaffe on Friday, when he implied that the Taliban posed a threat to the Libyan government.

Speaking at a news conference in Orlando, Fla., Cain was defending his performance in front of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s editorial board earlier this week, in which he searched for words and sat in awkward silence after being asked if he agreed with the Obama administration’s policy toward Libya.

“Do I agree with siding with the opposition? Do I agree with saying that Gadhafi should go? Do I agree that they now have a country where you’ve got Taliban and al Qaeda that’s going to be part of the government?” Cain asked reporters. “Do I agree with not knowing the government was going to — which part was he asking me about? I was trying to get him to be specific and he wouldn’t be specific.”

The Taliban are an Islamist militant group based in Afghanistan and Pakistan, while Libya is in northern Africa.

It’s the latest in a series of foreign policy stumbles for the candidate.

In October, Cain said it wasn’t important to know who was “the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-stan.” And in the Journal-Sentinel interview, Cain said he couldn’t recall Obama’s position on Libya because he had “all of this stuff twirling around in my head.”

Cain has responded to the criticism by saying he would surround himself with worthwhile advisers to help him out with foreign policy, and that voters didn’t expect him to know everything because “we need a leader, not a reader.”

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