Herman Cain, like his token fellow black Tea Party favorites Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) and Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), recognized early on that white right-wing populists were eager to publicly embrace African-American candidates to prove that they weren’t a pack of racists.

It works — so long as the black politician involved does not challenge any of the right-wingers’ basic assumptions about Negroes. So Cain goes around declaring that “I don’t believe racism in this country today holds anybody back in a big way,” and that blacks vote Democratic because they have been “brainwashed.”

He’s even willing to play the part of a dialect-spouting minstrel when necessary, as when he quotes his father, declaring, “I does not care.” Not surprisingly, white folks applaud his shenanigans, while black folks cringe. Isn’t that the essence of Tomming?