Herman Cain
Herman Cain, a candidate for the Republican Party's nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, has been hired as a contributor to both the Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network. Reuters

Herman Cain is raising more than a few eyebrows with his endorsement in South Carolina: The People.

Yes, really.

He hinted at it earlier this month, when he first announced that he would be making an endorsement: I'm going to make an endorsement the Thursday before the South Carolina primary, but let me warn you, it will be an unconventional endorsement, Cain told MSNBC on Jan. 6. Underscore the word unconventional.

He went on to say that he thought all the candidates still in the race at the time -- Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum -- were conventional.

If Cain was going to make an unconventional endorsement, We the People was probably the most logical choice, seeing as his post-campaign campaign has been built very self-consciously around the we-need-a-people's-candidate theme. But at the same time, it is bound to leave a lot of people wondering why he bothered to make an endorsement at all.