This early, I think it means pretty much nothing. After months and months of scrutiny and primary contest wins, and there are clear nominees from each party, then general election polling will start to mean something. This early, though, it means nothing.
Perhaps, but I can enjoy it while it lasts.
:dubious:
Are you reporting that partisanship is more enjoyable than stopping to pause and realize that a quack like Carson should not had been encouraged to go this far? Of course I can see that you do not want to be voted off the republican island by realizing that you would have to tell to many of the ones you know to stop supporting that dunderhead; but really, one has to do what it is good for the country and not just what it is good for a fringe group of the Republican party.
It strengthens his redemption narrative if he has more to have been redeemed from.
His apparent attempt to portray himself as fitting racist stereotypes of blacks is pretty damn jarring, though.
Ben Carson is not running for president any more than Donald Trump is. He is on a book tour. There is a delicious irony that his pretend presidential run could blow back on his brand.
That is a bizarre story. As I was reading it, I thought there is no way the first he’d hear of a child support claim was when the state was trying to garnish his wages. There would have to have been some legal process he must have been aware of leading up to that. And, lo and behold, the article contains an update from the State of Florida:
I also note that Dr. Carson gets a lot of bad news while he’s in the OR. This story says he was doing a surgery when he took this call from the Hopkins attorney. I was reading a few old articles about him today, and he claims that he similarly got word of his prostate cancer diagnosis while he was doing a surgery. He must take a lot of calls while he has people’s heads cracked open in front of him. Luckily, in both cases, he was able to maintain his amazing calm and focus on the surgery.
It’s beyond bizarre. I’m pretty sure they don’t patch calls through to doctors who are in an active operation for, if nothing else, malpractice reasons if something goes sideways during the operation. He’s sniffed too much laughing gas me thinks.
Would this sway you at all?
Can’t I enjoy both?
More details on the fake Yale psych test do-over:
So 45 years later, he still has no clue that this was a prank.
Lord have mercy.
He fell for a prank, that’s sure disqualifying.
Anyway, the guru has spoken:
natesilver: If past patterns are any indication, he’s about to surge to 42 percent in the polls.
micah: Because of the fracas over alleged misrepresentations in his life story?
natesilver: Yeah, after being ganged up on by the media.
micah: You think there’s a lot of smoke but no fire?
natesilver: I think whoever set the campfire did so sloppily. So maybe there are a few embers, but it looks bad. (This metaphor is rapidly going to hell.)
I think the pyramid nonsense will end up doing more damage to Carson than the West Point or Yale stuff. The pyramid thing is easy to understand and lets even pretty dumb people feel smarter than Ben.
Did you notice the chances that they gave Carson at getting the nomination?
Yeah, but those were low chances no matter how honest he’s perceived. As others have pointed out, it’s his ignorance that dooms him. Attacking his honesty might be a great way to bring him down earlier, but in the end he probably still goes down regardless.
It’s not disqualifying, but the whole story is strange. There’s no shame in falling for a prank, most of us have at least once. There’s something a little wrong in never realizing you fell for a prank, if that’s the case here. There’s something definitely wrong about using the time that you fell for a prank as an illustration on how you are more honest than all your classmates. For my own amusement I’ve been thinking of stories from my life where I lost a tennis match or got rejected by a date and thinking of how I can spin those stories into illustrations on why I was better than everyone else.
Also, I don’t really expect any of the other campaigns to talk openly negatively about Carson regarding this, but I’m kinda expecting the Rubio or Bush campaign to do some sore of whisper campaign to try to get people talking about how if Carson was fooled by a college parody newspaper, how do we know he won’t be fooled by Putin?
Yeah, but I don’t think any candidate wants their college years investigated too closely. Even Bernie Sanders gave a defense similar to the one he gave for Clinton’s emails.
No, anyone can get pranked.
But bringing this incident to mind repeatedly over the years, without getting a clue that this wasn’t the real deal, yes, as a matter of fact, that IS disqualifying. What sort of reality does your head have to be in, to not reach a point where you ask, “hey, what really happened there?”
Ditto his enduring cluelessness about West Point.
These show that he’s just not going to catch on to what’s going on in even pretty simple situations. Yeah, put someone like that up against Putin.
I totally agree, that real scrutiny should be on policy positions, and past political performances, and how they’d lead if they were elected, not on stories from years ago. But I’m just fascinated by Carson and all this stories from his youth, and hearing how they match up with reality. There are plenty of reasons to not vote for Carson, his autobiography is the least of it.
I hate to take the other side of a bet from Nate Silver, but if there are any polls for the period between late last week when all that stuff came out about Carson, and tonight’s debate, I bet they have him under 20%.