Like many African-American Republicans, Herman Cain attributes the fact that Black voters cast ballots overwhelmingly in favor of Democratic candidates to something beyond free will. Fellow conservative Rep. Allen West says they’re enslaved on the Democratic plantation and this week Cain said Blacks have been brainwashed.

“Many African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open-minded, not even considering a conservative point of view. I have received some of that vitriol simply because I am running for the nomination as a conservative,” Cain said in an interview on CNN’s The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer. “So it’s just brainwashing and people not being open-minded, pure and simple.”

The “good news,” he added, is that not all African-Americans have fallen under Democrats’ spell and he believes that a third to 50 percent do have open minds and some people could actually vote for him.

Since winning a straw poll in Florida last weekend, Cain has been getting a lot of attention. He says he rejects the notion that the Republican field already has whittled down to a two-man race between Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, but has decided whom he would support if either were to win his party’s nomination.

Cain told Blitzer that he could not support Perry for “a host of reasons,” chief among them his handling of illegal immigrants and border control. If Romney wins the nomination Cain could support him as he did in 2008, but only if he pledges to repeal President Obama’s health care reform legislation.

“If he stuck to that commitment, I could support him. But if in any way he wanted to compromise and go for a mandate, I couldn’t support him,” Cain said.

(Photo: AP Photo/Erik Schelzig)