Probably not. What does that have to do with the veracity of the book blurb on realbencarson.com?
Given the results of the November midterms, they’re probably right. We can only hope that President Obama is able to mitigate that somewhat.
I seem to be a bit late to the party. Carson is a man of undoubtedly impressive personal accomplishments. He’s also a man of absolutely bizarre personal beliefs, and I would be terrified to live under his presidency. It will never happen, anyway; he’s much too valuable as the black guy Republicans can say they’d vote for to refute accusations of racism, like Colin Powell (though I probably would have voted for Powell.)
I don’t want to wade through all of this thread and the back and forthing but this post - the first reply in the thread - was the most sensible thing said. If Carson is serious about a political career he could pretty much HAVE a seat in Congress if he wanted it. Otherwise, shooting straight for POTUS just looks like he’s trying to up his speaking fees after he’s out of the race.
What bothered me about Powell was, back in the early '90s everybody was talking him up as a presidential prospect, just because he was a successful general, even though nobody seemed to know anything about his politics. And for my part I still don’t know.
At least we know all about Carson’s.
That’s kind of what I liked about Powell. The fact that he didn’t spend all his time talking about his politics suggested to me that (1) he was moderate, and (2) he was not an ideologue. It’s like how you give the job of king to the one guy who doesn’t want to be king, because he’s the only one that can be trusted.
But, it’s not merely an administrative job, it involves policy choices. I’m not voting for any candidate for president until I have some notion of what he would do in office, besides just signing things.
It has everything to do with it when someone uses that blurb to insinuate that everyone of those 65% agrees with the direction they want to go.
A nitpick: that article draws the inference from him being a 7th Day Adventist. You could draw the same inference from someone being a Judaist or Christian. You could similarly draw the inference that he’s pro slavery etc ad nauseam.
It’s not much of a stretch when you take it in conjunction with the quotes in post 106, especially:
Quite frankly, I see 65% as a firm majority but not at all “vast”. 80% is a “vast” majority, a peak that this poll reached three years ago, during the shutdown. That does not make a very convincing case in support of Ben Carson’s agenda.
He’s apologized and says he’ll fix it: Ben Carson Apologizes For Plagiarism, Says He's Working To 'Rectify The Situation' | HuffPost Latest News
Wonder how they’ll fix it. Retitle the book The Best of Overwrought Conservatives On the Internet (Carson, B., ed.), perhaps?
BTW, is Carson a stroke patient? His face always looks kind of . . . crooked.
I never thought that myself, and his Wiki bio says nothing about it: Ben Carson - Wikipedia
I think the crooked face notion is exemplified by the first picture on this page. Not sure whether it looks like a neurological issue or is just quirky squinching.
Instead of “duck face”, maybe it’s something else?
Of course if your perspective is that the Presidency should be occupied by a person who believes that the world was literally created in 6 days, who believes that those who advocate for gay marriage rights are the same as those who support child molestation, who believes that the ACA is akin to slavery (he favor price controls on health insurance with governmental responsibility for catastrophic care coverage instead), that import tariffs must be dramatically increased, and that flat tax is the way to go (tithing was good enough for the Bible), then maybe a person with no qualifications who expresses your views is your candidate.
If that is not a good match then maybe not.
His main qualification seems to be the outsider status. Given that some of his beliefs will be considered whackadoodle by the Right and many others by the Center and the Left he is likely to maintain that position.
Ben Carson provides an interesting approach to political analysis.
I mean, if he were virtually any other random GOP pol, I could easily write him off as just another Republican lunatic, but in his case he’s so incredibly accomplished in the realm of neurosurgery that I don’t think that words such as idiot or dumbass can justifiably be applied to him. No, he’s an undeniably smart & accomplished guy in the context of neurosurgery - which is certainly nothing to scoff at - but his views on everything else are just so Gawddamned out there & stupid that I honestly can’t even understand how somebody with his intellectual acumen even came to believe such nonsense in the first place. His accomplishments in neurosurgery are exemplary, yes, but his positions & beliefs categorically, resolutely, absolutely disqualify him from the Presidency. Full stop.
Still, I second another poster’s assertion in this thread that if Carson really wanted to pursue a career in public service, then he could basically have a seat in the House if he ever chose to run.