Cain: Most Blacks 'Brainwashed' By Liberal Views

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain said that while African Americans have been brainwashed to oppose conservative views, many are rethinking their position and may not necessarily vote for President Barack Obama’s reelection.

Cain, the former head of Godfather’s Pizza, made his comments on CNN’s “The Situation Room” in response to a questioned posed by host Wolf Blitzer, He asked, “Why is the Republican Party basically poison for so many African Americans?”

“Because many African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open minded, not even considering a conservative point of view,” Cain said. "I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it's just brainwashing and people not being open minded, pure and simple."

Blitzer responded, “That’s a strong word to talk about your fellow African Americans, brainwashed?”

“For two-thirds of them, Wolf, that is the case,” Cain said. “Now, the good news is I happen to believe that a third to 50 percent of the black Americans in this country, they are open-minded. I meet them every day. They stop me in the airport. And so this whole notion that all black Americans are necessarily going to stay and vote Democrat and vote for Obama, that's simply not true. More and more black Americans are thinking for themselves. And that's a good thing."

Cain said he was making inroads into the black vote and believed that if he was the GOP nominee a substantial number of African Americans would vote for him.

"I do believe a third (of African-Americans) would vote for me, based upon my own anecdotal feedback,” he said. “Now, they won’t be voting for me because I'm black they’ll be voting for me because of my policies."