Ben Carson: Don't Let Purity Get In The Way Of Winning Elections

by JASmius

I wonder if Tea Partiers will remain as rabidly insistent on a Ben Carson presidential run after these comments:

Carson, president of the Carson Scholars Fund and chairman of the anti-Obamacare Save Our Healthcare Project, also discussed his long-term view of politics and controversial support for Monica Wehby — a pro-choice Republican running for the Senate in Oregon....

Carson used his column this week to explain and defend backing the pro-choice Wehby in Oregon as a move that navigates "a course between principle and pragmatism."

"I always say if two people agree about everything, one of them isn't necessary," Carson said Wednesday as a follow-up to the column. "But what conservatives have to understand is, if they take the attitude after the primary, 'My candidate didn't win; I'm taking my marbles and going home,' they're playing right into the plan of the progressive movement.

"We have to be smarter than that," he said, "and the fact of the matter is, if we take somebody who agrees with us most of the time so that we can gain power, we have the ability to sort out whatever other small differences exist after that," Carson said.

"But if you never get into position to be able to do anything, then, as Hillary would say, what difference does it make? You know, we're not going to get there, [and] we've got to get there first." [emphases added]

The good doctor is absolutely right, folks.  In a state as far left as Oregon, the only realistic way of picking up one of its Senate seats in a year in which the Democrats are so vulnerable that even the Land of Granola is in play is not nominating somebody like Ted Cruz, who, if he were an Oregonian, wouldn't be in the Senate today, but somebody like Ms. Wehby, or former Senator Gordon Smith, a candidate who, according to the most recent polling, is neck and neck with Donk incumbent Jeff Merkley.  Somebody, sorry to say, who isn't too far to the right to be electorally competitive.

Naturally, switch the venue to the South, or Texas, or Utah, or Idaho, solidly "red" states and that equation changes dramatically.  But in Oregon, if you want to win, we've got to nominate a "squish".  And as Dr. Carson says - or, rather, as Dr. Carson echoes me - the first step in resurrecting the Old American Republic is winning elections while we're still allowed to hold them, and in states where the best we're going to be able to do is a senator who's with conservatives fifty, sixty, seventy percent of the time versus one who's never with us, it's inexplicable to me how that isn't a no-brainer to every TPer.

Will that dampen the "run, Ben, run" craze on the Right?  Time will tell, I suppose.  What makes me wonder is how a man with such a high level of wisdom, and who says he doesn't want to run for president, could still be considering seeking a job for which he's got to know he isn't qualified, and on the supremely self-flattering "moment of destiny" angle - particularly when it cuts almost directly against his sensible reasoning behind his Monica Wehby endorsement.  Anybody who starts taking the "my country needs me" conceit seriously needs to sit down and breath into a paper bag for several days.

Jus' sayin'.