Ben Carson is now leading Donald Trump in Iowa and in several other key states.
Trump isn’t taking this lying down, and he’s already started trashing Carson’s religion. This will be interesting(to me at least): the Religious Right Vs. The Economic Nationalists. (No, liberal SDMB regulars, they’re NOT the same thing!)
Can Trump demolish Carson without alienating Christian voters he needs? Will Carson have to learn to fight dirty?
Stay tuned.
They’ve now entered the clown car in a demolition derby.
Not a thing for a responsible citizen to be proud of, but fascinating anyway.
The really fun part will be when Trump’s slide into last place accelerates and he ends up having to trash everybody! He will, of course, eventually declare that he was only in the race to make a point and set the agenda, and having successfully done so with the kind of consummate skill of which only he is capable, he is now withdrawing and letting lesser mortals fight it out. But until that happens, it’s going to be quite entertaining!
Pretty lightweight trashing: “I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about, I just don’t know about.”
And the easy innocent puppy dog defense:“I would certainly give an apology if I said something bad about it, but I didn’t – all I said was ‘I don’t know about it,’”
But it is understood to be an attempt to paint his religion as “other” and will go over badly with the Religious Right who probably see a secular Presbyterian as more “other” than Seventh Day Adventist is.
Right! And this is the guy who also “didn’t know” whether Barack Obama was born in the US. Or exactly how many Mexican immigrants are rapists and murders. There appear to be a great many things that The Donald “doesn’t know”, all apparently to his advantage.
Carson & Trump is Ogs way of insuring a Clinton in the White House. Seriously, have neither of them any idea what plays well with the majority of voters out there? Pissing off minorities and senior citizens isn’t a great start for your platform. Appeal to the most voters possible, not fringe fanatics.
Oh, and thank you Og, well played.
I’d like to think so. But it’s equally likely that the legacy of Carson and Trump will be they self-destruct and Jeb Bush emerges looking like a credible choice in comparison. Heck, at the rate these two are going, Ted Cruz could emerge looking like a credible choice by comparison.
I’d put my money on Cruz, unless Jeb ties him for 3rd place coming out of NH, since Iowa is probably out of reach for Jeb. But that’s not gonna happen; too much of the party has and probably will still reject Bush III come that time that the GOPe would risk low turnout.
I completely do not understand who Carson is appealing to. I get Trump, kind of. But Carson just makes no sense to me. Who is this guy’s base?
The lunatic base. It’s a fairly substantial base when you include evangelicals. Ideologically Trump is all over the map, with his platform dominated by the theme of getting rid of all the Mexican rapists. Carson has far-right extremism down to an art form.
Iowa’s not a great predictor of who wins in the last few cycles for the GOP. Even if Jeb loses there badly, we know the kind of religious conservatives they tend to go for. Last time they chose Santorum, and before that Huckabee. Unfortunately, Jeb can skip Iowa completely and still emerge as the nominee
The dull, the tired, the huddled sluggish yearning to take a nap.
I love the first part of the quote from Trump. “I’m Presbyterian. That’s down the middle of road.” It’s like, hey look, Presbyterian, that’s pretty normal, right? See, I’m normal.
That said, I also know pretty much nothing about Seventh-day Adventist.
They are just simple farmers, people of the land, the common clay of the new West.
More seriously, they are probably the religious side of the anti-establishement Tea Party. Like Trump supporters they don’t trust anyone associated with political office, but unlike them they don’t want to vote for a clearly hedonistic Casino owner.
Which strikes me as kind of funny, because the absolute most liberal church in my vicinity happens to be Presbyterian.
Iowa is a meaningless media circus. As I stated elsewhere, the Iowa caucuses have a history of selecting someone from the clown side of the menu.
What I would like to see is the media doing a better job of putting this in perspective. Rather that always touting the Iowa results as some harbinger of THINGS TO COME!!!, they should frame the story as “yeah, the 27 radical corn farmers picked Quasimodo as the King of Fools for their harvest festival again. In other news, a cat playing a piano!”
IGNORE IOWA!
They are pretty out there. Along the lines of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Icarus,
Good points!
The candidates have introduced religion into the campaign. Is religion now free game for the press?
Does Trump go to church every Sunday? Does anybody care?
Is Carson’s Israel policy guided by the Bible, God or current international events?
How much should God influence a President? How does God communicate with US Presidents?
The media needs to get on the job.
Crane
Ben Carson, justifiably, gets a lot of flack for the dumb and often bigoted stuff he says. But Carson can also be enormously inspirational and optimistic. And I think that appeals to people. Take, for instance, this quote about his childhood from his autobiography, where he talks about how learning to love books helped set his mind free:
I think it’s the quotes like that that inspire his supporters.
Hahahaha. It’s more like the LSM vs Trump and Carson. Trump did not trash Carson or Carson’s religion. Only the LSM and Trump-haters insist that saying, "“I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about, I just don’t know about”, is supposed to be an attack. :rolleyes: :smack: :rolleyes: