President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has turned over its most valuable asset — a massive computer database containing personal data on millions of American voters — to a new advocacy group created to advance the White House agenda on issues ranging from gun control to immigration reform. 

Organizing For Action (OFA), the advocacy group set up in recent weeks by the president’s top political aides, has already acquired access to the database under a leasing agreement with the Obama campaign, Katie Hogan, a former Obama campaign aide who is now serving as spokeswoman for the lobbying group, told NBC News. The information will be used to unleash an “army of the door knockers” to back the president’s legislative agenda as well as raise money for “issue ads” – particularly in crucial congressional districts, she said.  

As an opening salvo, the group on Friday urged the president’s supporters to call members of Congress in support of Obama’s gun control proposals, even offering a sample script of what they should say.

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The creation of OFA, which is being chaired by former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, is stirring controversy – both among public interest groups over the group’s plans to accept unlimited corporate donations, and among privacy advocates over the transfer of the database.

“It’s extremely worrisome,” said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, noting that Obama campaign supporters likely have no idea that personal data they voluntarily shared with the campaign has now been transferred and is being used for purposes beyond the election.

Dubbed the “nuclear codes” by campaign aides, the Obama campaign database is widely described as one of the most powerful tools ever developed in American politics. According to published reports, it contains the names of at least 4 million Obama donors – as well as millions of others (the campaign has consistently refused to say how many) compiled from voter registration rolls and other public databases. In addition, the campaign used sophisticated computer programs — with code names like “Narwhal” — to collect information through social media: Anybody who contacted the campaign through Facebook had their friends and “likes” downloaded. If they contacted  the campaign website through mobile apps, cellphone numbers and address books were downloaded. Computer “cookies” captured Web browsing and online spending habits.

“I can’t think of anything that rivals this data,” said Coney, noting that much of the data was voluntarily supplied by voters, something that consumers are often reluctant to do when dealing with commercial companies. “The private sector would love to be able to do what the (Obama) campaign was able to do.”  

OFA spokeswoman Hogan said that Obama supporters have the option in emails they receive of opting out — or unsubscribing — from the list, as required by federal law. But critics say that is not necessarily an option for information collected about voters through other means (such as public databases) and note that many on the list likely don’t notice the “unsubscribe” fine print on the emails.

At the same time, OFA’s plans for corporate-backed lobbying of Congress have spurred sharp criticism from campaign reformers — a cause the president once championed. Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a leading reform group, called OFA “dangerous and unprecedented,” noting that it has been set up under the same section of the tax code used by controversial GOP advocacy groups, such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS (as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit organization). This will allow the group to accept unlimited donations from wealthy individuals and corporations.

“With his decision to allow corporations to fund the new organizations that will operate as an arm of his presidency, President Obama has ‘given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money,’” said Wertheimer in a statement that quoted Obama’s own words two years ago to denounce the Citizens United Supreme Court decision striking down  many campaign finance limits. “This would take President Obama about as far away as he could possibly get from the goal he set in 2008 to change the way business is done in Washington.” 

Related: Nonprofit spends big on politics despite IRS limitation

In response to a request for comment, a White House spokesman emailed recent comments by top Obama political adviser David Plouffe to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “Yes, we will voluntarily disclose all of our donors,” Plouffe said. “And we're very excited. The people who actually made the president's campaign in both '08 and '12, our great grassroots volunteers, were pretty clear after the election they wanted to stay with it and they want to be out there organizing, driving message, holding people accountable on issues like immigration, you know, the deficit and jobs, gun safety.”

But how much the group will disclose about the source of its money is still unclear. There is no legal requirement for a 501(c)(4) group like OFA to do so. Hogan, the OFA spokeswoman, declined to say how often the group will make disclosures or whether it will report amounts that donors give or simply provide a list of contributors. (Such a list -- without amounts detailed -- was recently released by the Presidential Inaugural Committee.) “That’s still being worked out,” she said.

As if to underscore the role of major corporations in helping to underwrite OFA, the unveiling of the group came at a special invitation-only event on inaugural weekend at the Newseum, sponsored by Business Forward, a corporate-backed trade group close to the White House, according to a Politico account. Business Forward -- whose charter members include Citi, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Ford, Google and Comcast, majority-owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of NBC News -- had lobbied for the White House-backed fiscal cliff deal, specifically touting its tax breaks for businesses, such as write-offs for new capital investment and research and development credits, according to a statement on the group’s website.

“We need you. This president needs you,” Messina said at the launch event, according to the Politico account, adding that the national advisory board of OFA will be “filled with people in this room.”  

One corporate executive who attended the event told NBC News the roll out -- which featured a spirited talk by former President Bill Clinton on gun control -- drew numerous major Obama campaign bundlers and fundraisers, such as Obama campaign finance chairman Mathew Barzun (now reportedly a front-runner to be tapped for ambassador to the Court of St. James) and finance director Rufus Gifford.

“My takeaway from this was that they set this up to take advantage of the Citizens United decision and operate this outside the Democratic National Committee so they won’t have to file (election) reports,” said the executive, who asked not to be identified.

Hogan, the OFA spokeswoman, said that OFA will not run campaign ads — only “issue” ads that do not fall under the election laws.

But the underlying political purpose of the group is not disputed. “The way it’s organized, we legally can’t participate in elections,” Stephanie Cutter, a top Obama campaign official who now serves on the board of OFA, said at a recent Politico-sponsored inaugural event. “But that doesn’t mean the issues we’re organizing around won’t mobilize the American people to vote for things — to vote for that economy we’ve been working for, to vote for immigration reform, to vote for common sense gun reforms. I think we can affect elections, we just can’t legally be involved in them — for this particular organization.”

More from Open Channel:

• Fiscal cliff, elections boost spending on lobbying
• Gazing into 'dark pools,' the high-tech tool that enables insider stock trading
• Dermatologists blast tanning industry campaign to play down skin cancer fears

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NEW YORK - After earning headlines for becoming the latest Democrat to speak positively of Mitt Romney's history in the private sector, Bill Clinton made clear exactly whose side he's on when he hit the Big Apple on Monday for three joint fundraising appearances with President Barack Obama.

Electing the Republican nominee would be "calamitous for our country and the world" Clinton said at a reception in private home where tickets went for $40,000.  And at the New Amsterdam Theatre near Times Square, he said: "I don't think it's important to re-elect the president, I think it's essential to re-elect the president."

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 The trip came less than a week after Clinton drew headlines for becoming the most prominent Democrat to undercut the president's attacks against Romney for his time at Bain Capital.  In an interview on CNN last Thursday, the former president said Romney "had a sterling business career" and described his time as an executive at a private equity firm as "good work."

And while Clinton did not walk back any of his earlier remarks, he found plenty of other ways to build a case against the former Massachusetts governor.

"They tell you how terrible this health care bill is," Clinton said of Republicans.  "It's hard for them, since Gov. Romney's finest act as governor was to sign a bill with an individual mandate in it, which he has now renounced."

Clinton introduced the president at all three appearances here.  Obama asked for his donors support in what he acknowledged will be a tight race, all the while maintaining that he stands for the same issues he did during his 2008 run. 

"The only reason that this is going to be a close election is because people are still hurting," the president said at the theatre.

But it is a slip of the tongue at the last event that may garner the most attention from the day trip.  "We are not going back to a set of politics that say you're on you're own.  And that's essentially the theory of the other side.  You know, George Romney," Obama said, referring to the Republican nominee's father before quickly correcting himself.

Both Romney and Obama have been working furiously to raise cash in an election that will have plenty of money influencing it aside from what the candidates rake in.  Speaking before the crowd that paid at least $250 to hear a concert and two presidents, Obama addressed the role outside groups will play in this year's election.  

"Sometimes when thing are tough, you just say, well you know what, I'll just keep trying something until something works.  And that's compounded by $500 million in Super PAC negative ads that are going to be run over the course of the next five months," he said.  "And they'll try to feed on those fears and those anxieties and that frustrations.  That's basically the argument the other side is making.  They're not offering anything new, they're just saying 'Things are tough right now and it's Obama's fault.' That pretty much sums it up.  There's no vision for the future there."

Still, any drop in enthusiasm from his base was hard to decipher.

"I still believe in you," Obama said to the theatre crowd that interrupted him multiple times with standing ovations. "I hope you still believe in me...when people ask you what this campaign is about, tell them it's still about hope, it's still about change." 

 

In the upcoming Wisconsin primary, billed as perhaps the final opportunity to change the trajectory of the Republican presidential contest, frontrunner Mitt Romney leads Rick Santorum by seven percentage points, according to a new NBC News/Marist poll. But should he capture the nomination, Romney would start out as the underdog against President Barack Obama, whom Romney trails by double digits.

In Wisconsin’s April 3 Republican contest, the former Massachusetts governor gets support from 40 percent of likely primary voters, including those who are undecided yet leaning toward a particular candidate. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum gets 33 percent, Texas Rep. Ron Paul gets 11 percent,  and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gets 8 percent. Seven percent of respondents are undecided.

The poll – conducted March 26-27 – is consistent with the findings of a recent Marquette Law School survey, which found Romney leading Santorum by eight points. The Wisconsin race follows a familiar pattern: Romney holds the advantage over Santorum among liberal and moderate Republicans (43 percent to 24 percent), conservatives (42 percent to 33 percent), non-Tea Party supporters (42 percent to 31 percent), and those who earn $75,000 or more annually (47 percent to 32 percent).

Read the NBC News/Marist Poll

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Meanwhile, Santorum leads among very conservative primary voters (42 percent to 33 percent), strong Tea Party supporters (40 percent to 32 percent), and evangelical Christians (40 percent to 29 percent).

So far in all the GOP contests where there has been exit polling, Romney has won in every contest where evangelical voters have accounted for less than 50 percent of the electorate. And he has lost in every contest where that number has been higher than 50 percent.

The evangelical percentage among likely Wisconsin GOP primary voters, according to the NBC/Marist poll: 41 percent.

Obama leads in the general election
Looking ahead to the general election, the survey shows Obama holding a sizable advantage over his Republican opposition in this battleground state, which he carried in 2008 but where Republicans made big gains in the 2010 midterms.

Obama leads Romney in Wisconsin among registered voters, 52 percent to 35 percent, with 13 percent undecided. And he edges Santorum, 51 percent to 38 percent, with 11 percent undecided. The poll suggests, however, that both Romney and Santorum would have room to grow in the general election, given that a substantial portion of the undecided vote leans Republican.

Benefiting Obama is growing optimism about the state of the economy (52 percent believe the worst is behind them), as well as a more negative perception of the Republican Party (48 percent say the Democratic Party does a better job in appealing to those who aren’t hard-core supporters, while just 32 percent say that about the GOP).

What’s more, there’s a significant gender gap: Obama leads Romney among women by 25 points (55 percent to 30 percent) and men by 12 points (50 percent to 38 percent). The president’s job-approval rating in Wisconsin stands at 50 percent. 

Divided over the recall
As for the recall contest of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, 46 percent of Wisconsin voters say they will support him in that race, while 48 percent indicate they’ll vote for the eventual Democratic candidate who will face off against the incumbent governor.

The approval rating for Walker – who sparked a firestorm of criticism in his effort to curb collective-bargaining rights for the state’s public-sector workers – sits at 48 percent approval, 48 percent disapproval. According to the poll, a majority of likely Republican voters say they’re following the recall more closely than the GOP presidential primary race, 51 percent to 37 percent.

The NBC/Marist poll of Wisconsin was conducted March 26-27 of 2,792 registered voters (with a margin of error of plus-minus 1.9 percentage points) and of 740 likely Republican primary voters (plus-minus 3.6 percentage points).

 DETROIT, Mich. – Obama supporters are going to the movies.

In the effort to fire up backers nationwide, the president's re-election campaign screened a documentary about President Barack Obama’s tenure at more than 300 spots on Thursday.

The 17-minute "documentary" production, called "The Road We've Traveled," is narrated by Tom Hanks and directed by Davis Guggenheim. It highlights the Obama administration's aid package to the automobile industry – the same accomplishment touted this morning in a campaign speech by Vice President Joe Biden. (While Biden specifically named the Republican candidates at his Thursday address in Ohio, the Guggenheim movie names only one – Mitt Romney – with a brief mention of Romney’s 2008 op-ed titled, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.")

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In downtown Detroit, the segment about the auto bailout drew applause from a crowd of more than 150 Obama supporters, most of them African Americans, who gathered at a 2012 campaign office for the screening.

"He has the nerve to do unpopular things," Gloria Mills, a retired teacher and native Detroiter, said of Obama after the film. "They keep saying 'saving the auto industry.' He made a very good business decision and made a good business loan. We made money from that and the industry is booming again."

At the Detroit headquarters, the screening was preceded by a lengthy presentation – that at times had the air of a pep rally – by local campaign staff about its area phone banking and voter registration goals.

The film opens by outlining the economic woes faced by Obama even before the inauguration, with key advisers predicting a possible economic collapse without swift action.

"All I was thinking at that moment was 'Could we get a recount?'" senior advisor David Axelrod jokes in an interview.

Also named in the film as major feats are the passage of the health care overhaul, the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the killing of Osama bin Laden and the president's naming of two female Supreme Court justices. 

Perhaps as prominent as Hanks' narration is former president Bill Clinton, who appears in the film five times to laud his Democratic predecessor's decision-making.

"He took the harder and the more honorable path," Clinton says of Obama's decision to order the attack on bin Laden's compound. "When I saw what had happened, I thought to myself, 'I hope that's the call I would have made.'"

Even as public opinion polls show Obama's approval rating in flux, supporters in Detroit were optimistic that the president's record would earn him a November victory.

Longtime volunteer Bill Richardson, 71, said that the still-unresolved GOP presidential primary would help Obama, adding that the more the president campaigns, the higher his chances for re-election will become.

"Once he starts campaigning, people start hearing what his accomplishments are, hearing what the Affordable Care Act is really doing for them and their children and their friends and neighbors, I think his chances will be 75 percent to 25 percent."

Gloria Mills, the teacher, was even more confident.

"Personally, I want him to beat the socks off the competition," she said. "But he's definitely going to be elected."

 

PALATINE, Ill. – Hours after finishing a disappointing second place in both the Alabama and Mississippi primaries, Newt Gingrich marched his campaign onward, vowing he is “staying in the race.”

Campaigning in Illinois on Wednesday, Gingrich made little mention of the two contests he had hoped to win in the South. He instead focused his speeches on the big ideas that drive his campaign, explaining that many people just don’t understand what needs to be done to help change the country.

“The thing I find most disheartening about this campaign is the difficulty of talking about positive ideas on a large scale because the news media can’t cover it and candidly, my opponents can’t comprehend it,” Gingrich told the five hundred plus person crowd at the Northwest Suburban Republican Lincoln Day Dinner. “The result is you can’t have a serious conversation. It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t count. It is as though it doesn’t occur.”

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Gingrich, who brought up Alzheimer’s research for the first time in weeks, admitted he wants to be “the candidate of science and technology.”

“We are at the edge of such extraordinary opportunities and it is so hard to get this party to understand it,” said Gingrich, speaking in a more frustrated tone than usual. “Our political system is so methodically and deliberately stupid.”

The calls for Gingrich to exit the race have only increased in the 24 hours since Tuesday’s primaries that Rick Santorum won. But Gingrich says he will not bow out, arguing he is the only Republican who can take on Washington and all the problems that come along with it.

“We cannot be a normal party. If we run a normal campaign trying to govern within the framework of the current system we have no future because people would rather have Democrats do it, they at least enjoy it,” he said. “We are miserable at trying to govern in their system. We are in the business of changing Washington, not being accepted by it. It is a fundamentally different model. It is the base of what Reagan did.”

 

PASCAGOULA, Miss. – Campaigning for the first time since a string of Super Tuesday victories extended his delegate lead but failed to put the Republican nominating contest in the bag, Mitt Romney on Thursday evening secured yet another major endorsement, with a side of grits.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant announced his support for Romney in brief remarks at the port here, before attention turned to another Mississippian, Romney's body-man Garrett Jackson, whom the former Massachusetts governor credits with beginning his transition into an "unofficial southerner."

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"I am learning to say y'all and I like grits, and ... strange things are happening to me," Romney joked with the crowd.

Romney's embrace of southern staples couldn't have come at a more opportune time, as the race for the GOP nomination now turns to a geographic region likely to be less fertile turf for Romney than the West and industrial Midwest have been in previous weeks, with nominating contests in Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas, Missouri, and Louisiana to come before the end of the March.

Senior Romney aides have acknowledged to reporters that Romney is unlikely to break through with a win in the culturally southern state, but argued that even second place finishes could net the frontrunner significant delegates in the race to the 1,144 needed to secure the nomination.

"There are other candidates that are going to win some more races, but we're going to be consistently coming in second place, and getting delegates in a lot of these states," the Romney aide said, pointing to Tennessee as a recent example.

In his appearance tonight, Romney spoke like a frontrunner – never mentioning his Republican rivals, and keeping his focus on President Barack Obama. Standing in front of massive deep-water drilling rigs, Romney hit the president for the rise in gas prices during his term, a kitchen-table issue likely to resonate in a state where the energy industry takes on outsize importance and where the median income is nearly $15,000 below the national average.

"Since this president has been president, the cost of gas has doubled," Romney said. "Not exactly what he might have hoped for, and he says, ‘Well it’s not my fault.’ By the way, we've gone from yes we can to, ‘It’s not my fault.’ You notice – a new campaign slogan. 'It’s not my fault.' Well this is, in part, his fault."

To win here, Romney will need more than just his economic message to sink in: He'll need to win over voters both unfamiliar with his record and potentially distrustful of his faith.

In neighboring Tennessee, with similar demographics, Romney fell to Rick Santorum by nine points, losing by 19 points among born-again Christians and by 35 points to those who said a candidate sharing their religious beliefs mattered very much.

Bryant told reporters after the event that Romney's biggest handicap here would be that "people don't know him" in a state where he doesn't have the benefit of having campaigned before, and predicted only that the state would be "close" in the end.

Already, an air campaign is underway to educate voters in the south about Romney's record – and those of his opponents.

Pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore our Future, has spent nearly $7 million dollars on ads in the south in February and March, with three separate ads in rotation in Mississippi and Alabama alone since Feb. 14^th. A Romney aide told NBC news the campaign began airing ads in Alabama, but not Mississippi, on Thursday.

NBC's Jamie Novogrod contributed reporting from Boston.

HIAWATHA, Iowa - Newt Gingrich was very critical of his GOP rivals Monday as he is continuing to get hounded with negative ads in the Hawkeye State and is asking Iowans to help put a stop to it.

“If they run into one of these candidates, tell them they ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Gingrich said before roughly 150 people just outside of Cedar Rapids. “They ought to take this junk off the air.”

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And it is these negative attacks that are perhaps causing the recent drop in polls.

“Watch TV here for 2 days. You had all sorts of people, all sorts of these Super PACs who have been consistently running negative ads,” Gingrich admitted to a couple hundred people early Tuesday at an event in Davenport.

The former House Speaker has vowed to run a positive campaign and not attack his rivals even when they hit him… most of the time.

"Every once in a while I slip when they get my goat and I can't quite help myself,” he admitted inside Level 10, an apparel manufacturer. “But I think I’ve done a pretty good job at staying focused on issues.”

Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Perry all have TV ads and campaign mailers attacking Speaker Gingrich on a variety of issues, such as being a “flip-flopper” and not being a “consistent conservative.”

“I am not going to comment on the people who are suggesting I am not a consistent conservative although one wonders how they would know one if they saw it,” Gingrich said.

But the campaign, as the Speaker pointed out himself, is still organizing itself and having to play catch up with just 15 days until the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

“We are still putting our campaign together. It is wild. It is amazing,” he said. 

Gingrich, who is scrambling to get his name on the ballot in Virginia for the primary, told reporters in Davenport, “Some candidates have been running for five or six years and raised millions and millions of dollars. They're better organized than I am.”

But in the end, Gingrich said, it’s up to Iowans first and foremost to decide which type of campaign strategy should be rewarded.

“When you get ready to vote in 2 weeks ask yourself, do you really want to reward politics as usual, negativity as usual, attack as usual, consultants as usual, fundraising from Wall Street fundraising as usual,” Gingrich asked. “Or do you want to vote for the only person who has consistently, steadily been positive for the entire campaign.”

The Speaker continues with four campaign stops in Eastern Iowa Tuesday.

 

Herman Cain said Saturday that he is suspending his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, choosing to end his campaign after weathering weeks of scrutiny over alleged sexual misconduct and accusations of an extramarital affair.

"As of today, with a lot of prayer and soul searching, I am suspending my presidential campaign," Cain said at an appearance outside his campaign headquarters in Atlanta. "I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction, the continued hurt caused on me and my family. Not because we are not fighters."

Cain said he's launching a "plan B" of his public career, a new policy-oriented website called TheCainSolutions.com. He said he will endorse a Republican candidate for president "in the near future." His announcement could lead to the effective end to his campaign, but technically leaves open the option of reviving his bid for the presidency.

"I am not going to be silenced, and I am not going away," he defiantly told disappointed supporters.

SLIDESHOW: Herman Cain

Cain's announcement nodded to the continued scrutiny that's surrounded his campaign since a media storm that began on Oct. 31, when POLITICO reported that the National Restaurant Association had settled sexual harassment claims brought by two women against Cain. The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO steadfastly denied the allegations, even as other women – some anonymously – emerged to make similar allegations against Cain. “The charges and the accusations I absolutely reject. They simply didn't happen. They simply did not happen,” the candidate said at a Nov. 8 press conference after Sharon Bialek, a former restaurant association official, publicly detailed harassment claims against Cain.

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“As far as these accusations causing me to back off and maybe withdraw from this presidential primary race … ain’t gonna happen,” declared Cain during that address.

VIDEO: Cain denies allegations of sexual harassment

On Nov. 28, an Atlanta woman told a FOX affiliate that she had engaged in a 13-year-long affair with Cain. Ginger White said their relationship had ended only recently, when Cain started to pursue the GOP nomination. Her claims took on an added degree of gravity after Cain acknowledged sending money, without his wife’s knowledge, to White. He maintained the two were merely friends, and had never engaged in a romantic relationship.

Those allegations prompted Cain, who had defiantly pledged to stay in the race and had continually denied any wrongdoing, to take a breath and reflect on the direction of his campaign. He told senior staff on Tuesday that he was taking time to “reassess.” During that “reassessment” period, Cain and his top staffers sent mixed messages about whether that meant the candidate would drop out. The Cain camp then revealed a Friday meeting between the candidate and his wife, Gloria, the first since White made her allegations.

Ahead of that meeting, Cain made this statement during a campaign stop: “Tomorrow in Atlanta I will be making an announcement. But nobody’s gonna get me to make that prematurely … Tomorrow we will be opening our headquarters in northwest Georgia where we will also clarify – there’s that word again, clarify – exactly what the next steps are.”

Cain's wife appeared with him at the announcement, receiving chants of "Glo-ri-a!" from the crowd. Herman Cain said he was "at peace" with his wife, his family, and himself. 

"I have made many mistakes in life -- everybody has. I made mistakes professionally, personally, as a candidate, in terms of how I run my campaign. And I take responsibility or the mistakes that I have made," he said. "But because of these false and unproved accusations, it has … had a tremendous painful price on my family."

Cain spoke of his campaign mostly in the past tense throughout his speech, lashing out at the media for fueling the frenzy that became associated with his campaign.

Cain’s decision to abandon his campaign marks a somewhat remarkable reversal of fortunes for what was, by all accounts, an unconventional campaign. Having never been previously elected to office, Cain surged to prominence in a fluid GOP primary season in part due to the strength of his “9-9-9” economic plan. The plan, which calls for a nine percent national sales tax along with nine percent flat taxes on personal and corporate income, became the cornerstone of his campaign.

CARTOON SLIDESHOW: Herman Cain

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s stumbles in Republican debates this fall helped create an opening for Cain, who ascended to nominal frontrunner status by mid-October, when an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found him leading the Republican field nationally, as the choice of 27 percent of Republicans. Cain’s national success appeared to translate to key primary states, too; a late October Iowa Poll conducted by the Des Moines Register found Cain vying for the lead in the state’s caucuses. (By comparison, a late November poll conducted for the Register found Cain’s support had plummeted to eight percent.)

Cain’s rise had seemingly defied conventional political wisdom, considering the unusual way in which he managed his campaign. The candidate spent little time in traditional primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Instead, Cain traveled across the U.S., making stops in states like Wisconsin or Ohio, which don’t host meaningful primary contests. And Cain’s decision to effectively put his campaign on hold this fall to pursue a book tour in the thick of the campaign raised eyebrows among political observers.

VIDEO: Cain on "Meet the Press"

During those trips, Cain committed other errors that contributed to rising doubts about the viability of his campaign. Iowa Rep. Steve King, an influential conservative in his state's Jan. 3 caucus, expressed that sentiment on Twitter: "Virtuous or not, declaring in or out, however we feel for him, Herman Cain's campaign is over."

Cain had rather cavalierly said that he didn’t feel the need to understand the intricacies of foreign policy. (“We need a leader, not a reader,” he declared at a mid-November campaign stop.)  One particular meeting, with the editors of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, helped cement growing concerns about Cain when he awkwardly stumbled for an answer to a question about how he would assess President Barack Obama’s policy toward Libya.

"President Obama supported the uprising, correct? President Obama called for the removal of (Moammar) Gadhafi. I just wanted to make sure we're talking about the same thing before I say, 'Yes, I agreed' or 'No I didn't agree,'" he said, before stopping himself and reconsidering his answer. 

"I got all this stuff twirling around in my head," he explained.

This post was last updated at 2:14 p.m.