9343: Brainwashed & Bamboozled.

From The New York Daily News…

Herman Cain, 2012 GOP presidential hopeful: Black voters ‘brainwashed’ into supporting liberals

By Aliyah Shahid, Daily News Staff Writer

Herman Cain has a theory on why black Americans reliably vote Democratic: They’ve been brainwashed.

“African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view,” the Republican presidential candidate told CNN on Wednesday.

“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,” Cain added.

The latest remarks come on the heels of several other eyebrow-raising comments the businessman has made about race this week.

He told Fox News on Tuesday that Americans are “over this first African-American president thing.” And in his upcoming memoir, obtained by U.S. News & World Report, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, claims President Obama supporters play the race card to cover up the commander in chief’s failures.

Still, Cain’s campaigning has been picking up steam since he won Florida’s straw poll over the weekend. And in a surprising Rasmussen poll released Wednesday, Cain trails Obama by just five points in a head-to-head matchup.

The most recent black Republican to run for President was Alan Keyes, a former diplomat who campaigned in 1996, 2000 and 2008.

Democratic candidates at the presidential level have traditionally won the majority of black votes. In 2004, John Kerry won 88% of the vote compared to George W. Bush’s 11%. In 2008, 95% of black voters went to the ballot for Barack Obama, compared to 4% for Sen. John McCain.

In the latest interview, Cain told CNN that he believes at least a third to half of black Americans are open-minded. “I meet them every day,” he said. “They stop me in the airport. And so this whole notion that all black Americans are necessarily going to stay and vote Democrat, vote for Obama, that’s simply not true. More and more black Americans are thinking for themselves. And that’s a good thing.”