Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain accused former Bush White House Senior Adviser Karl Rove of trying to "deliberately" damage his campaign Monday in an interview with the Washington Examiner's Byron York.
York asked Cain about Rove's comments Monday morning on "Fox and Friends," wherein he showed a whiteboard of recent Cain gaffes on issues such as abortion and terrorism, saying that they amounted to him "not being up to the task" of being president.
"It's a good thing the voters are not looking at Karl Rove's little whiteboard," said the former Godfather's Pizza CEO. "I believe it is a deliberate attempt to damage me because I am not, quote unquote, the establishment choice. But why not go with the choice that the people seem to like?"
Rove said in an appearance on "The Sean Hannity Show" on Oct. 13 that while Cain had drawn "passion and enthusiasm," he doubted that the candidate was serious because he had not spent enough time in early primary states.
Cain added that he believes Rove wants former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to be the Republican nominee. Rove denied to York that he favors any candidate and said that he calls "balls and strikes."
Rove told conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt in January that Romney needed to admit he was wrong to sign into law the Massachusetts health care plan. "If Mitt Romney recognizes that his answer on why on what they did in Massachusetts looks so much like what Obama tried to do to the country, if he recognizes that is a problem, then he'll work his way out of the problem. If he doesn't, he doesn't," he said.
Rove also criticized Texas Gov. Rick Perry in his "Fox and Friends" appearance Monday over his evasive answer about President Barack Obama's birth certificate in a recent interview with Parade magazine. "You associate yourself with a nutty view like that, and you damage yourself," Rove said. "I know he went and he's trying to cultivate -- as all of them are -- Donald Trump, in order to get his endorsement," Rove continued, "but this is not the way to go about doing it, because it starts to marginalize you in the minds of some of the people whom you need in order to get the election."
Rove has repeatedly criticized Perry, which some attribute to cold relations between former President George W. Bush and Perry, who became governor after Bush left for the White House in 2001.
