The Herman Cain Sexual Harassment Boondoggle is beginning to resemble the chase scene at the end of the Benny Hill Show.

What’s got me puzzled is:

1.  If Politico did let the Cain Team know 10 days ahead of time, why didn’t they get out in front of this?

2.  Is this a case of “friendly fire” or a Democrat derailment scheme?

3.  Or is it, as a friend has suggested to me, a plan by Cain and his team to keep him in the headlines , and suck all the oxygen out of the room? After all, until yesterday, when Cain’s team accused them, have you read any stories in the MSM about Romney and Perry this week?

Regarding the question of who is really behind the Politico story, the suspect list is growing.

As of last night, washingtontimes.com reported that:

Herman Cain’s campaign is revealing suspicions about who is behind the story regarding the former unidentified employees who accused Mr. Cain of sexual harassment in the late 1990’s.

According to a source who is friends with the Cain campaign, not only is the Rick Perry campaign involved but also the Mayor of Chicago and former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is likely involved with the sexual harassment accuser attacks. A friend of the Cain campaign believes a National Restaurant Association (NRA) employee out of the Chicago office leaked the story to the Perry campaign via information and influence from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office.

According to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, Curt Anderson, the Perry advisor who the Cain campaign is accusing of leaking the damaging information, is denying the charges:

“I’ve known Herman Cain for about 7 years. I was one of several consultants on his Senate race in 2004 and was proud to help him. I’d never heard any of these allegations until I read them in Politico, nor does anything I read in the press change my opinion that Herman is an upstanding man and a gentleman. I have great respect for Herman and his character and I would never speak ill of him, on the record or off the record. That’s true today and it’s not going to change.”

The way these anonymous accusers have been coming out of the woodwork, one would think that Herman Cain is the second coming of Bubba Clinton.

Yesterday, abcnews.com wrote that:

A third woman considered filing a workplace complaint against Herman Cain at the National Restaurant Association over what was termed aggressive and unwanted behavior, with invitations to his corporate apartment, according to a report in the Associated Press. Meanwhile, a radio host in Iowa said that the candidate had made “awkward” and “inappropriate” comments to staffers at the station during a visit earlier this year.

Cain has already denounced the two previous allegations of sexual harassment against him as false, and suggested at least one of the women was a poor worker. But an ABC News investigation found that both women are highly respected professionals who have gone on to successful careers in and around government.

One woman in Maryland has worked for years as a public spokesperson for various agencies of the federal government.

Her case appears to be the one Cain has described in his round of interviews, saying she was a writer working in the trade group’s communications department.

Cain has said that all he could recall was making an innocuous gesture to this woman while she was in his office with the door open and his secretary just outside. “I referenced this lady’s height and I was standing near her, and I did this saying, you’re the same height of my wife, because my wife is five feet tall and she comes up to my chin,” Cain explained. “This lady’s five feet tall and she came up to my chin. So obviously she thought that that was too close for comfort. It showed up in the actual allegation.”

A lawyer for the woman, Joel Bennett, later called CNN to dispute Cain’s version of events. “To the extent he’s made statements that he never sexually harassed anyone,” said Bennett, “and there was no validity to these complaints, that’s certainly not true with respect to my client’s complaints.”

Bennett said his client was upset at how she was being characterized in Cain’s comments and might want to speak out. He contacted the National Restaurant Association on Wednesday morning to see if his client could be released from her confidentiality agreement. According to a statement from the NRA, the group referred Bennett to call its outside counsel. “Mr. Bennett indicated that he would do so tomorrow, after he met with his client,” said Sue Hensley, a senior vice president of public affairs for the NRA.

So the accusers are not just anonymous, they’re well-respected and anonymous.

Yeah, right.  And I’m a 22 year old  blonde Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader named Buffy.

If  Cain’s Team is staging all of this, it’s a brilliant scheme.  Not only are they keeping his name in the headlines, they managed to plant fish hooks in the mouths of the gullible Main Stream Media and damage their competitors campaigns and the opposition party all of the same time.

If the Cain Team is not responsible for all this, then Cain is being Thomasized…or as he said:  We are witnessing a high-tech lynching.

Either way…politics is a dirty business.