I think Switch said it best....
I've said all along that I like and respect Ben Carson, even though I've also maintained all along that he isn't remotely qualified for the presidency of the United States. He is a brilliant neurosurgeon, and a more important, he's a good Christian man.
Which makes the way he's ending his 2016 presidential bid equal parts sad and stomach-turning:
Asked by Todd Starnes if he was “satisfied with the way Senator Cruz has handled himself as Christian” over the incident in Iowa, Carson said, “Well, let me put it this way, it’s not the way that I would have handled it.”
“I would have said if I didn’t agree with what’s being — which he did say that — I would make sure that it didn’t happen again,” Carson continued.
What makes Dr. Carson think Senator Cruz isn't doing precisely that?
“And I would take corrective action. Not to take corrective action is tacitly saying it’s okay, or it’s sort of like, as Hillary Clinton said after Benghazi, ‘what difference does it make.’”
First, to what sort of "corrective action" is Dr. Carson referring? Terminating the Cruz staffer who distributed the initial CNN report of Carson quitting the campaign? Eh, maybe that's appropriate, maybe it isn't; we don't have all the details to be able to judge it one way or the other. I can't imagine to what other "corrective action" he could be referring other than what Donald Trump was screeching on Wednesday about a do-over, and given that Carson over-performed his pre-caucus poll numbers, and never had a remote chance at finishing in the top three anyway, it's difficult to see how he was hurt by the snafu.
Then there's the matter of his announcing that he was flying home for "a change of clothes," which gave rise to the initial CNN report and is one of the strangest excuses - heck, strangest things period - I've ever heard any political candidate say and/or do, at least since he suspended his campaign for a week back in October to do a book tour. That stunt reinforced the long-suspected notion that the Doc's heart was never really in this campaign and that he was running because others told him to for the cash cow he could be to their interests.
Erik Erickson pointed to this factor again today:
The Carson Campaign is really just a consultant heavy direct mail operation that pooped out a Presidential campaign and they’re hoping to keep the money flowing by playing up outrage over the Cruz campaign. The Carson campaign is collapsing with major staff layoffs planned and more cuts to come after New Hampshire. The plans appear to have been in the works before Iowa, which means the outrage over Cruz’s campaign efficiency has more to do with trying to bleed more money from people out of sympathy than anything else.
But this begs the question of whether Carson is such a cipher (no Matrix pun intended) that he's going out and smearing Cruz with the Hillary comparison because somebody told him to do it or if he's answering the sin of which he's accusing the Texas senator with a rousing one of his own:
“I’m not saying that it rises to the level [of] Benghazi, I’m saying it’s the same kind of attitude,” he said, when pressed by Starnes if the controversy rose to the level of Benghazi. “The attitude being, it’s water under the bridge, it’s gone by, let’s not deal with it.”
If it doesn't rise to the level of Benghazi, then why are you making the bogus comparison, Doc? You could make the same point without being so gratuitously insulting about it. Which strongly suggests that your point is not a moral one but is meant to be retaliatory for something that didn't even damage you.
On the bright side, it looks like Gentle Ben has finally become a real "professional politician". Too bad for him that it's coming far, far too late to make any difference to his campaign. If he'd had even this much "fire in the belly" all along, he might not have face-planted.
If, on the other hand, he's being sent out there to engage in this vile slander, then it speaks to those who have so supremely ill-served him in mismanaging his campaign and, frankly, using him so flagrantly, and speaks to Carson himself for being so weak as to allow himself to be used in such a despicable way.
Please, Doc, don't ruin your reputation for somebody else's lost cause. Go out with the dignity you deserve. It would be the Christian thing to do, would it not?
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