March 28, 2011 09:22 PM UTC

At Least He's Not Your Keynote Speaker...Oops!

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Statesman’s Ernest Luning reported this weekend on the March 18th Denver GOP Lincoln Day Dinner–keynoted by longshot presidential candidate Herman Cain:

“It’s easy to be a Republican in Colorado Springs, in Douglas, in Weld County,” said Secretary of State Scott Gessler, a Denver resident. “But it’s not so easy in Denver. It’s very brave for people to be Republicans here – to fight the fight, carry the flag, to do it unabashedly with integrity.”

Far from being a Quixotic effort, Gessler said, revving up the Republican vote in Denver can tip the scales statewide…

Possible Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain – dubbed “The Herminator” by 850 KOA talk show host and former FEMA Director Michael Brown, who emceed the dinner – underlined the point in the dinner’s keynote address. Standing just a stone’s throw from the spot where Obama signed the American Reinvestment And Recovery Act of 2009 just over two years ago, Cain vowed to return to do some bill-signing of his own.

Did Mr. Cain have anything to say about Muslims in his Denver speech? We’re guessing if he had said anything like what’s reported below, it would have made Luning’s story–via ThinkProgress, remarks from Cain at the Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines, Iowa this weekend:

KEYES: You came under a bit of controversy this week for some of the comments made about Muslims in general. Would you be comfortable appointing a Muslim, either in your cabinet or as a federal judge?

CAIN: No, I would not. And here’s why. There is this creeping attempt, there is this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong in our government. This is what happened in Europe. And little by little, to try and be politically correct, they made this little change, they made this little change. And now they’ve got a social problem that they don’t know what to do with hardly.

Except that pesky Constitution says no religious tests for office. You’re free to add “well, duh.”

Was Cain really the best choice to “rev up the Republican vote,” Scott Gessler?