The businessman from Georgia was asked that question after a tea party activist said a Bachmann-Cain ticket would be a “dream team.” Other tea partiers also have high praise for both Republican presidential candidates, believing that both are fully wedded to tea party ideals.
“It’s a little early to talk about a team at this point because a lot can happen,” Cain said. But as Cain spoke to this reporter from the middle of a crowd of supporters, some were heard saying, “That would be a dream team.”
Cain swatted away any notion of that with a bit of the political bravado that’s earned him both fans and critics.
“The people are going to have a lot to say with who's going to run with me on my ticket.
Bachmann supporters are allowed in. It's also where I found Rick Green talking about "moral relativism."
Green, dressed in blue jeans, glasses, and an American-flag polo shirt, is the co-founder of Wallbuilders, the Texas-based organization that's "dedicated to presenting America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation." The name is a reference to the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem in the Book of Nehemiah. If you know the organization at all, though, you know it as the home of David Barton, whose revisionist history about the faith of the Founders has made him a certified celebrity on the Right. (Mike Huckabee says Barton's "the most important author in America.") In their literature and on their radio show, they construct a clear narrative: America is a fundamentally Christian nation, divinely inspired.
That's the gospel Green is preaching today in the Bachmann tent. "We're not just gonna say, 'oooh everybody's equal and moral relativism for all!," he tells the crowd, cowbells ringing. Instead, we need to take a stand, and there is no one better to do that than Michele Bachmann: "She's got a backbone that'll make a freight train take a back road."
Green launches into a short allegory about the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and then, with members of the audience holding up their hands in prayer, revival-style, returns back to the situation at hand: "This is the hour, my friends, that you get to stand guard at the watchtower of freedom."
Darwin Hofmeister of Ackley, Iowa is standing just a few dozen feet away from the stage. He was a Tim Pawlenty supporter before he switched to Bachmann. "Are you familiar with the Family Leader?" Hofmeister asks me, referring to Iowa’s leading social conservative group. Last month the Family Leader unveiled a pledge that candidates would be required to sign to be eligible for the group's endorsement—in included, among other things, a vow to oppose gay marriage, fight gay marriage, and ban Islamic Sharia law (it also suggested that black families were more stable under slavery). "Her and Rick Santorum were the only ones that signed the pledge. And to me that made all the difference"
"I think that's probably one of the most important issues," Hofmeister tells me. "All you have to do is look at the riots in London and state fairs and you'll see a bunch of kids with no values." So does he agree with Green's statement that moral relativism is ruining America? "Definitely.
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