GOP urges Cain to tell all


McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON

Prominent Republicans called on Herman Cain to disclose full details of the sexual harassment allegations that have dogged his presidential campaign for the last week, saying the candidate must address lingering questions about the incidents.

Cain, speaking to reporters after a debate in Texas on Saturday night, said he would not provide any more specifics, asserting that “everything has been answered.”

“We’re getting back on message,” Cain said.

Cain needs to be more forthcoming than that, some fellow Republicans said on television shows Sunday morning. Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman said Cain needs to “get the information out and get it out in total.”

Huntsman, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said “legitimate questions have been raised, and that information has to come forward.”

Two women reportedly received financial settlements stemming from Cain’s behavior in the late 1990s, when he was president of the National Restaurant Association.

Cain has denied that he sexually harassed anyone. Beyond the matter of what took place between Cain and the women, the uproar has tested his ability to manage a crisis. After Politico first broke the story, Cain gave a series of sometimes conflicting statements about what happened. Now he seems determined to drop the subject entirely.

Before Cain can move on, he must provide more answers, said Haley Barbour, Republican governor of Mississippi.

“What he wants to do is get back on message, and the way to do that is to get all the facts on the table and get it behind him,” Barbour said on “Meet the Press.” “I’m not one of the people who think this is necessarily fatal. It might not hurt him at all. But people need to know what the facts are. And that’s the challenge for him right now to get those out as quickly as possible and get it behind him.”

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