Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain acknowledges slipping from the top tier of candidates while addressing accusations of sexual harassment and confusion about his policy stands.
The Georgia businessman insists his campaign is sound and supporters remain onboard what he calls the "Cain train."
Cain has denied the accusations and says "nothing has gone wrong" in terms of the campaign's mechanics. "Nothing has gone wrong in terms of our strategy of spending time in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida."
But he tells CNN's "State of the Union" that some people "are heavily influenced by perception more so than reality."
He said his comments on abortion and foreign policy, which have caused a media firestorm on more than one occasion, have been taken out of context.
Referring to an interview on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" in which Cain appeared to be taking a pro-choice stance on abortion, the candidate said:
That whole segment I talked about my position on life from conception, no exceptions -- they didn't show that. Then he basically raised a highly hypothetical situation relative to if it were my granddaughter and that's when they took that part out of context because of a poor choice of words. In retrospect they later got blown out and it became the story.
Cain also says he supports "targeted identification" in weeding out potential terrorists. He doesn't see that as racial profiling and says "if you take a look at the people who have tried to kill us, it would be easy to figure out exactly what that identification profile looks like."