By Lindsey Boerma

Herman Cain finds himself tied for the lead in the GOP presidential nomination race with Mitt Romney, the man he endorsed last time around

THE VILLAGES, Fla. — Sixty-year-old Susan Tubbs last week waited in line behind 200 people at a Barnes and Noble store, and when it was finally her turn, she held out her copy of This is Herman Cain and meekly voiced a desire to give the author a hug. In spite of his handler’s insistence otherwise, presidential candidate Herman Cain halted the swift-moving line, slipped around the barricading booth, and hugged her.
“Sometimes I break the rules,” Cain boomed with a toothy grin, pausing to allow a friend of Tubbs photograph the moment.
Indeed, Cain’s candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination has broken the rules. When the former Godfather’s Pizza executive formed a presidential exploratory committee in January, pundits immediately deemed him unelectable. He had never been elected to public office, his campaign lacked basic organizational infrastructure, and he was virtually unknown outside of business circles. But lately, Cain’s long-shot campaign has afforded him many hugs, even more photo ops, and the satisfaction of proving the pundits wrong.
Quite a few Republicans, it seems, were yearning for a hug from a candidate, not with a long resume in government, but without the sort of Washington experience that they see at the root of the country’s problems.
“Look at what just happened!” Tubbs gushed after her Cain embrace. “This guy’s a real person. He’s not a politician, and that’s very important to me. But he’s got the economic experience, and he says it like it is.”
Read More: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20118017-503544.html