Will Herman Cain Self-Immolate?

I won't lie - I don't like Herman Cain. Not at all. He's a pompous bastard even if one over looks his anti-gay statements and political positions. Worse yet, as today's constantly changing story lines confirmed, Cain's either a pathological liar or he's suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s if he can't remember charges of sexual harassment, not to mention not insignificant cash pay outs to settle the sexual harassment charges. Not that a history of sexual harassment and hush money settlement payouts will shake the belief of the Kool-Aid drinkers in the GOP base who may well write this whole scenario off as attacks from the left wing media. With he GOP base, objective facts and objective reality never seem to get in the way of the base's world view. Politico - which first broke the story on Cain's sexual harassment history - has an update on Cain's flip flopping story lines. Here are some highlights:

Herman Cain backtracked on a central part of his story about the sexual harassment allegations leveled against him in the 1990s, telling PBS and Fox News that he recalled details of a financial settlement with one of the women involved.

Changing his tune on the question of cash settlements was only the most glaring of several shifts in Cain’s comments Monday on the harassment charges leveled when he was president of the National Restaurant Association.

Only hours before, Cain said he was unaware of any “settlement” related to sexual harassment – a reversal he attempted to explain away through verbal hair-splitting.

Those comments clashed dramatically with Cain’s repeated assertions earlier in the day that he was not aware of any settlements that had been reached with women who said they felt harassed by Cain.

It’s difficult – if not impossible – to explain Cain’s reversal from earlier Monday, when he said he wasn’t familiar with cash payouts, period, with his later admission that he had discussed terms of settlement with the NRA’s general counsel.

In his public appearances Monday, Cain said categorically that he had “never sexually harassed anyone.” But in the interview with PBS, Cain left some wiggle room on a question about whether he had ever behaved in an “inappropriate” way.

Cain’s shifting set of answers Monday followed an even more disastrous reaction Sunday night, when Cain spokesman attacked POLITICO’s story as an assault on him from “inside the Beltway” – without denying the substance of the report.

Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon told the Associated Press Sunday night that the campaign was denying the POLITICO report, only to have the candidate confirm much of the substance a day later.