Gingrich: Cain departs to Romney camp, endorses front runner

At least Herman Cain's friendship outasted the penguins.'

Since January, the Pokemon-quoting jester of this year’s GOP nominating contest had been a staunch ally of Newt Gingrich. However pizza magnate Herman Cain today announced that he was now supporting presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, according to CNN.

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"To Newt Gingrich I would say, 'Speaker Gingrich, with all due respect, let's get on with this, OK?'” Cain was quoted as saying in an interview with the Washington radio station WMAL. "I even endorsed Newt Gingrich at one point because I thought he had a shot. Well, not now. He doesn't have a shot."

Cain suspended own his campaign last year amid a flurry of charges of sexual misconduct and switched to support Gingrich just as the former House speaker’s standing in opinion polls was cresting.

Gingrich has won primary battles in South Carolina and his home state of Georgia but nowhere else. Of the 1,142 delegates so far awarded to four candidates for the presidency, Gingrich has won 136, or 12 percent, leaving him in third place behind Romney and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who has dropped out of the race, according to The New York Times. After saying he planned to contest a brokered nominating convention this year, Gingrich has since admitted that Romney will likely be the nominee anyhow.

According to WMAL, Cain was in Washington to lead a rally against the Buffett Rule, a White House proposal to raise taxes on high earners to rate paid by salaried workers, and what Cain called “politics as usual.”

“It is a dumb, stupid rule," Cain was quoted as saying. "It will do nothing to help the economy, it will do nothing to reduce the deficit. It is just another political ploy on the part of the Democrats so they can say when the Republicans vote it down that the Republicans were for the ruch and against the poor. It is just the same old political you-know-what that the American people are sick of."

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ABC News quoted a Gingrich spokesman as saying that Cain should decide whether to support his convictions or his party’s strategy.

“The angle right now is for the party to get to a nominee as fast as possible,” RC Hammond was quotd as saying. “It’s up to Herman Cain whether or not he’s put in his application with the establishment.”