[A post-Florida Gator-devouring USC gamecock's Stone Mountain of Georgia roost-view of his undergrad alma mater, Wofford College and Spartanburg hometown's hosting of the South Carolina, CBS/National Journal, Republican Party presidential debate]

Let the Big Dog eat!

The motto of Wofford Terriers’ (pictured) sports teams is “Let the Big Dog eat!”, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich looked like the Big Dog eating away at GOP presidential nomination opponents’ leads last Saturday night.

The Speaker’s mastery of foreign policy was equaled only by Former Massachusett’s Governor Mitt Romney, both of whom made clear that they would be willing to take unilateral military action to prevent the Islamist mullahs ruling the terrorist state of Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately for those, like me, that consider it imperative that any President of the United States maintain a credible deterrent and that we have a nominee with a bold jobs plan (like 9-9-9) fit for the depths of the present economic crisis, Herman Cain turns out to be with Ron Paul in publicly and dovishly taking the military option off the table over the issue that could drastically change life on Planet Earth one minute after Iran demonstrates its enty into the world’s Nuclear Club.

The critical exchange:

Major Garrett: This week, a U.N. nuclear watchdog agency provided additional credible evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon. If you were president right now, what would you do specifically that this administration is not doing to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon?

Herman Cain: The first thing that I would do is to assist the opposition movement in Iran, that’s tryin’ to overthrow the regime. Our enemies are not the people of Iran, it’s the regime. And a regime change is what they are trying to achieve. Secondly, we need to put economic pressure on Iran, by way of our own energy independence strategy. By having our own energy independence strategy, we will impact the price of oil in the world markets, because Iran uses oil not only as a– means of currency, but they use it as a weapon.

One of the reasons that they are able to afford that nuclear weapons program, is because of oil. Secondly, we would then work to increase sanctions on Iran, along with our friends and our allies. So whereas we will not be– so that’s why I do believe that they have a nuclear weapons program and they are closer to having nuclear weapon, stopping them– the only we can stop them is through economic means.

Major Garrett: A quick follow up, Mr. Cain. You say assisting the opposition, would you entertain military assistance and opposition?

Herman Cain: I would not entertain– military opposition. I’m talkin’ about to help the opposition movement within the country. And then there’s one other thing that we could do. We could deploy our ballistic missile defense capable (UNINTEL) war ships strategically in that part of the world. We have the biggest fleet of those warships in the world. And we could use them strategically in the event that they were able to fire a ballistic missile.

Cain’s, not quite the Spartan-like fighting stance

Spartanburg is named for the Pelopennisian War/Sparta 300-like fighting spirit and skill of General Daniel Morgan’s (whose statute stands in his eponymously-named Downtown Square of the debate’s host city) “Spartan Rifles” that defeated the British in the pivotal nearby Revolutionary War Battles of Cowpens and Kings Mountain.

Aside: The late great Smokin’ Joe Frazier was born and reared by a Low Country Sharecropper in Beaufort. Later, he would be treated like an “Uncle Tom” by Nation of Islam’s Muhammed Ali and the press like the Leftist Drive-by Media has treated Herman Cain, but I digress.

President Barack Obama’s foreign policy has been to appease Iran between the killings of high-profile terrorists like Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-awlaki and Libya’s Gadaffy. Mitt made it clear that he would consider using pre-emptive military action against Iran to prevent their development of nuclear weapons. Newt made clear that Iran is and has been at war with the United States since their 1979 Islamist revolution was hastened by an Ayatollah-appeasing Democratic Party President Jimmy Carter. Michelle Bachmann bemoaned thebetrayal of our victory in Iraq, thus further emboldening Iran.

Sadly for this proud neo-con rooster, our most recent, pre-debate champion, Herman Cain made clear that Iran need not worry about the armed forces of the United States if he is elected to replace Barack Obama.

If a President won’t defend us, we won’t be defended. Congress can’t force a Commander-in-Chief to fire one shot at an enemy, no matter how many antiquated “declarations” of war they pass. The United States is The Target of would-be despots. Iran is and has long been the  greatest world sponsor of terror that has killed Americans in numbers that only al Qaeda has exceeded.

Cain’s deterrent? Help dissidents and prepare for a Cold War with SDI as our only protection? We don’t know if the Fifth Imam-seeking apocolyptic Shiites can be deterred like the Soviets. We do know that Islamists like those in Iran killed 3000 Americans on September 11, 2001 without weapons of mass destruction save for hijacked planes.

And now we know that Herman Cain’s boldness ends with tax reform at the water’s edge. This rooster still crows for a 9-9-9 Reagan-like recovery, but we can no longer lean to Cain for the nomination when he rules out preemptive action against Iran that we favored when despotic-regime changer and Muslim-Liberator  President George W. Bush had Iranian Quds and Republican Guard forces and their whole Persian country surrounded on three sides.

Leading up to the debate, it seemed that Cain had survived the faux outrageous sexual harassment accusations, as the Penn State scandal reminded that there are work-reporting requirements of the truly outrageous, as opposed to the lawyer-created victimization of hurt feelings 12 years after sweet nothings or scoldings assaulted and battered serial accusers’ feminine ears.

We were happy to hear the only female on the Wofford debate stage, devoid of any identification save for a giant “CBS” logo (Could have been a movie set near the La Brea Tar Pits…We think Wofford’s Old Main logo, pictured, would have looked better…) , defended the waterboarding of captured terrorists and that the same Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann disabused David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press the following morning of any notion that the federal government get involved in the continued demonization of Coach Joe Paterno, who, incidentally, followed all reporting laws.

You see, liberals imagine that with just the right laws, humans can change human nature and prevent any crime from happening in the first instance. So that, any occasion of the violation of current laws is also an occasion for passing new and improved laws. Bachmann rejected that notion as well as Gregory’s insistence that only the federal government could properly investigate child rape in the Keystone State.

We were thrilled to hear Newt voice our many crowings on the critical need to rebuild the United States Navy and maintain it as the superior and ubiquitous force across the seven seas.

We wish that the occasion of a stoppage of the Great Republican Debate Marathon 2011-2012 could have also addressed how occupier leftist Democrat-types continually demonize free market capitalists like Roger Milliken of Spartanburg who helped build the modern-day GOP and who was instrumental in  the integration of Wofford College. Never properly celebrated by the Civil Rights Industry solely-owned subsidiary of the modern day Democratic Party because he kept destructive labor unions out of his largest private textile company in the nation.

Ironically, the number three Democrat in Congress, James Clyburn, representing a congressional district in South Carolina mostly devoid of organized labor, lobbies for labor laws that would end the secret ballot and thus help to keep his constituents unemployed by emboldening the foes of Boeing’s expansion to North Charleston. It seems that union money in his party’s campaign coffers matters more than jobs, while he gives only lip service for Boeing as having “broken no laws”. Not a word against Obama’s NLRB.

So, from the home of President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes and Henry Kissinger’s former Army base at nearby Camp Croft we see the emergence of an Army brat turned Speaker as the next challenger to an establishment-ordained nominee whose ills no RomneyCare can cure.

Meanwhile, a certain University of South Carolina Fighting Gamecock and Wofford College matriculator roosted atop Stone Mountain of Georgia is reminded of an album by Spartanburg’s own Marshall Tucker Band, Searching for a Rainbow, that will lead us to a Tea partier promised land of Bachmann, Gingrich or even another Texas Governor?

As of now this rooster announces dawns leaning to no one but never forgetting that only the Party of Lincoln elephant can defeat the jack asses that have this country unexceptionally on its knees.

Mike DeVine

Editor - Hillbilly Politics

Co-Founder and Editor - Political Daily

Atlanta Law & Politics columnist –  Examiner.com

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

More DeVine Gamecock rooster crowings at Modern Conservative, Unified Patriots,  and Conservative Outlooks. All Charlotte Observer and Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-eds archived at Townhall.com.