Mark Block now referring to himself in third person, too

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Robert Stacy McCain has an interview with embattled Cain campaign manager Mark Block, via Matt Lewis.

In it, Block reasserts that the Perry campaign was responsible for leaking reports of the settlements reached with Cain’s sexual harassment accusers by the National Restaurant Association, which seems odd given he had to reverse course on blaming Perry consultant Curt Anderson last week:

BLOCK: No, no — I will not back off of the Perry thing, Stacy. I will say that I was wrong on the kid that worked for Politico, because we didn’t have our facts straight. I’m not backing off on the Perry thing. I backed off on the guy [consultant Curt Anderson], because he came out and said that it wasn’t him. But I’m still not backing off that the pot wasn’t stirred by the Perry folks.

Block is referring to a mistake he made on national television this week when he claimed without evidence that former Politico reporter Josh Kraushaar is the son of Cain accuser Karen Kraushaar, which is not true.

But the interview reveals another pattern from the Cain campaign— the propensity to speak in third person. Cain did it several times at his Phoenix press conference, and now Block is on it.

Does Block make mistakes? Of course! You know, one of the reasons is we don’t have an army of researchers and analysts telling us what we can and cannot say and how to say it, OK? I don’t have a whole slew of lawyersthat I go to and say, ‘You know what, because I say this thing about this kid that works for Politico and his mother, double-check the facts.’ I get handed a piece of paper and it says that he works at Politico, they broke the story, same last name of this woman, connect the dots — I was wrong! I admitted I was wrong, all right?

But perhaps this rhetorical approach is an advantage over rival campaigns. After all, as Cheryl Prater writes, “Rick Perry doesn’t use it because he forgot the third person.”
Ha!
Mary Katharine Ham