*UPDATE*

Video of Cain’s Chief of Staff, Mark Block, walking back the allegations that Perry’s camp was involved reveals a very odd position they seem to be staking out.  According to Block, even though “all evidence” points towards Perry’s camp, given the fact that Anderson worked there, they are very pleased that Anderson denies involvement and claim to be ready to move beyond this silliness.

Well, with one caveat.  They still totally think that it was the Perry camp, only now they lack “all of the evidence” which lead them there in the first place.

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On Fox News today, Curt Anderson puts the ball back in Herman Cain’s camp.  Whereas Mr. Cain has made it clear that he had consulted with Anderson in 2004 about sexual harassment settlements occurring while he was President of the National Restaurant Association, Mr. Anderson says that it’s simply not accurate.

Anderson offered no comment when asked whether or not Cain was contradicting himself by at one time claiming no knowledge of the payouts while at another time saying he had consulted Anderson.  He did, however, offer a very interesting way of determining whether or not he is the leak as Cain’s campaign has accused him of.

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For the video impaired: at the end of the clip above Anderson gives blanket permission to any news outlet he’s ever spoken to about Herman Cain to reveal what he said.  In other words, if he spoke to Politico, he just gave them permission to say so.  While this still leaves the possibility that he told someone else who then told the press, there’s no doubt that that is an even flimsier connection to the Perry camp than the previous connection and also requires you to assume that Anderson is lying about not knowing the allegations existed in the first place.

More importantly however, this is more fallout from what should’ve been a blip on Cain’s radar.  His campaign has completely botched it’s reaction to something that, not only did they have 10 days to prepare for and apparently didn’t, but, by Cain’s own admission, knew would be an issue in a Senatorial campaign 8 years ago.  What’s the excuse for being all over the map with all of that time to prepare an appropriate response?

On Megyn Kelly later, Herman Cain’s Chief of Staff Mark Block backed off of the allegations against Perry’s camp saying that although all evidence pointed to Anderson as the leaker initially (I guess they consider having a job ‘evidence’), they are happy he denies it and have nothing but respect for Curt.

I suppose the Mitt Romney “Let Them Destroy Each Other” celebration will get moved up to today.