Now that a second accuser has come forward to talk about sexual harassment at the wandering hand of Herman Cain, I think it’s safe to say that his run for the Republican nomination is all but over. With Texas Governor Rick Perry also sinking in the polls, it looks as if Mitt Romney will eventually prevail.

I had an interesting conversation a few days ago with an old friend, a Republican, living in the Deep South. There was a time when he couldn’t have voted for Governor Romney because of his Mormonism. “How can I support someone who thinks Jesus Christ was just another apostle,” he once said to me. My friend, who is himself deeply devoted to his own faith, has had a change of heart. He now thinks Romney will win the nomination and says religion should play no part in anyone’s decision. After all, church and state are supposed to be separate.

I formed my own positive opinion on Romney 18 months ago. He was coming through Toronto to promote his book, No Apology, at a question-and-answer session scheduled for Indigo’s flagship store at Bay and Bloor. Indigo CEO Heather Reisman couldn’t attend, so they asked me to stand in. I was to ask Romney four questions and the only constraint, according to his staff, was that I could not ask if he intended to run for president. Well, I thought, there’s my fourth question. He didn’t blink when I asked, simply stating that he was going to decide after Labor Day.

As I watched him sign books and work the delighted crowd of four hundred, I concluded that he was an excellent retail politician. While I don’t agree with many of his policy pronouncements, I have admired his performance in the recent debates. My prediction is that he will be the GOP nominee. And if the economy does not improve during the next twelve months, Mitt Romney will be elected the forty-fifth president of the United States of America. At least he knows where Canada is. He was born and raised in Michigan and has a summer property in Ontario.

I passed my neighborhood Shoppers Drug Mart today and noticed the life-sized Justin Bieber cut-out that had been in the window for a few weeks had been replaced by another display. I wheeled inside, hoping to buy or otherwise obtain Beebs for my granddaughter, a fan.

The cosmetician just rolled her eyes. Turns out I’m not exactly the only interested party. The cosmetician had recently attended a Shoppers gathering at which she’d learned the pop star’s cardboard cut-out had already been stolen from 36 Shoppers stores. The cut-outs are meant to promote the singer’s new fragrance, Someday, and according to the contract must be displayed in every store for a year.

The number of stores that have suffered losses must surely be higher now that a character called Sheena Snively stole a statue from a Yonge Street Shoppers live on MTV. In another instance, a women pulled up outside a store, sent her daughter in to grab his Beebness, then they all three drove off. Talk about your getaway cars.

The stories are legion. In Florida, a man was charged with theft for snatching a Bieber likeness. At my local Shoppers a man walked off with their copy for an appearance at his daughter’s birthday party then returned it later in the day. After that staff watched the target even more closely but somehow it was still stolen. A review of the surveillance cameras did not show the actual heist. That’s why there’s a new window display.

My son Mark, who writes the best blog in the country, has a solution. If there’s a demand, create a supply. He suggests making as many cut-outs as will sell at $175 each with all proceeds going to the two charities that Bieber has designated for receipts from the fragrance: Pencils of Promise and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Fathers and mothers everywhere would happily pay. Maybe even a few grandfathers, too.

At last, Rob Ford has done something normal for a holder of his high office. The mayor yesterday attended the closing ceremony of the Pan-Am Games in Mexico to accept the flag passed along to the next host city, Toronto.

What a disappointment he must be to those who voted for him. What a civic humiliation he is to the rest of us. And Toronto has had some looney-tunes leaders. William Dennison (1966-1972) once greeted a visitor by holding up a writing instrument and saying, “This is a ball point pen.” “I know,” came the reply, “I was educated at Oxford.” Talking about a trip to Africa, Mel Lastman (1998-2003) said, “I just see myself in a pot of boiling water with all these natives dancing around me.”

Those comments now seem like minor gaffes compared to Ford giving the finger to a woman who wanted him to put down his cell phone while driving or his expletive-filled tirade last week to a 911 operator. Nor, after a year, has he made any progress on his “stop the gravy train” election promise. He agreed to a four-year police contract that set a record and approved a police budget that’s the same as last year after demanding a 10 per cent cut.

Some people grow in office, others never should have been allowed in. We can only hope by the time the 2015 Toronto Pan-Am games comes to an end, that a new mayor is handing over the flag to the next host city. Meanwhile, all we can do is duck and hope any damage done is limited.

It’s been almost two months since Lloyd Robertson resigned as anchor of CTV National News. That’s long enough to conclude that his replacement, Lisa LaFlamme, doesn’t have what it takes. LaFlamme was an excellent journalist in the field but rather than make me pay attention, she renders me uneasy. I don’t like her manner, her clothes, or the slight sneer that curls her upper lip.

This is not a complaint caused by a woman taking over from a man. I like Sandie Rinaldo, CTV’s weekend anchor, and would have been happy to watch her during the week. I was one of the few who admired the job that Katie Couric did on the CBS Evening News. But as a refugee from CBC, I’m about to do the unthinkable and go back to Peter Mansbridge rather than continue to watch LaFlamme. The main reason I fled CBC, the inane items by Keith Boag from Ottawa, are no more now that Boag is in Los Angeles where he hardly gets any face time.

To keep me watching CTV news, here’s my nominee for LaFlamme’s replacement: Lynne Russell. The former CNN anchor now lives in Toronto where she works in real estate and is also Storyteller-in-Residence at Centennial College, whatever the heck that role entails. Storyteller-on-my-TV again would suit me just fine.

Shares in Research In Motion are up almost $3 this morning in what might be called a relief rally, relief that the new iPhone didn’t impress. Welcome to the new world of overwrought expectations. Because the iPhone 4S is unable to solve the problem of debt in Greece, the media and techies have pooh-poohed it.

The BlackBerry has been suffering through similar denunciations for months. How soon the worm turns on success. Look at Yahoo. Not so long ago Yahoo was hot. Now they fire CEOs three before tea.

To be sure, Research In Motion has fallen behind. The new models released in August were catchup only. An updated version of PlayBook is overdue. Competitors are gaining ground in business via the same route BlackBerry once infiltrated the office. Employees are buying their own Androids, iPhones and iPads, thereby forcing IT to accept what’s already within the firewalls. Time was when RIM won major contracts doing the same.

I haven’t done any interviews with RIM executives since my book was published 18 months ago. Nor, as far as I can tell, has anyone else learned much. But I do know that RIM has upped the internal ante. People have disappeared and projects are being pushed. Will it be enough? Maybe this breather will help. As long as the next round of new models using QNX software dazzle the market. And as we have just seen with Apple, jaded observers don’t impress easily.

If I had to declare a winner in last night’s debate, I’d say it was Dalton McGuinty. Both Tim Hudak and Andrea Horwath were fine but they used too many rehearsed sound bites. They also relied on some of the same old ideas from other campaigns such as Hudak’s promise to reduce the size of the cabinet and Horwath’s plan to raise corporate tax rates. Yawn. And what the heck was this “ticket to the middle class” that Hudak kept talking about? Most voters are already there.

To be sure, McGuinty fouled his nest going after Hudak’s views on foreign workers and foreign investment as if Hudak were somehow anti-foreigner. It was a tactic unworthy of a premier. McGuinty should have taken to heart the quote he attributed to Bill Davis about how it was unbecoming to run down Ontario. It’s equally unbecoming to besmirch an opponent the way he did.

The format was fine but too often the question got lost in the rhetoric. Still, the three leaders likely managed to secure their respective party’s voters, although I’m not sure how many undecideds they snagged. But none of that matters. Last spring the vast majority of Ontario residents said they wanted change. The fact that neither Hudak nor Horwath have managed to tap into that discontent shows that they don’t have what it takes to win. This election is still McGuinty’s to lose and so far he hasn’t.

This is, bar none, the quietist election I’ve ever known. I can’t tell if no one cares or if there is a storm brewing and a government is about to be thrown out in Ontario. Only one party has been to my door canvassing. With but ten days to go, the other campaigns mustn’t have enough volunteers.

There’s no question that Tim Hudak stumbled out of the gate. His sound bites about “foreign workers” were tasteless. Those who saluted were already voting for him anyway. But there must have many voters who cringed and thought, “He’s as bad as I feared.”

And yet, the polls say that the PCs and the Liberals are tied. A minority government looms with the NDP as kingmaker. It has always been said that people don’t vote for minority governments but maybe that’s changed. We grew so accustomed to minorities in Ottawa that seemed to work we now want one in Ontario.

In this climate, tomorrow night’s debate is crucial. The winner becomes premier.