Carson has limited appeal for blacks
“Only Ben Carson can get enough black votes to keep the Democrats from winning the White House.”
The National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee
Run, Ben, Run – Your Mouth
I know who isn’t going to become president of these United States-Ben Carson!
The acclaimed pediatric neurosurgeon has become a Tea Party darling with Tea Partyish stands on the issues. But he’s better with a scalpel than he is with a microphone.
He burst onto the political scene after he gave a 2013 National Prayer Breakfast speech that was critical of President Obama, who sat only a few feet away.
Conservative columnist, Cal Thomas, who’s not exactly an Obama supporter, later wrote a blistering column that chided Carson for injecting politics into an annual event that had always been non-political.
Despite Thomas’ column, Republicans immediately anointed Carson as the perfect Barack Obama antidote.
After all, a black man who’d dare to take on the nation’s first black president within arm’s reach of him, was just what some Republicans were looking for.
Dr. Benjamin Solomon “Ben” Carson, Sr. had become the second coming of, well, Herman Cain.
Except, so far, he makes Cain seem like Alexander Hamilton by comparison.
In October of 2013, while speaking at the Value Voters Summit in Washington, Carson, who by then had become a Fox News contributor, claimed, “Obamacare is really the worst thing that has happened in this country since slavery.”
What?
Worse than, 9/11, Richard Nixon, the Great Depression, and, er, Sarah Palin?
He may be a gifted neurosurgeon, but he doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp of history.
Meanwhile, as he picks up new rightwing devotees, he’s also just a few careless words away from gathering guffaws.
Two weeks ago, when he was asked if he feels that being gay is a choice, he proudly said, “Absolutely.”
His unscientific proof was that “A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight – and when they come out, they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.”
That even led to ultra-conservative Glenn Beck, of all people, to imply that Carson might be in line for a little self-inflicted frontal lobotomy.
“Goodbye to his presidential career,”
Beck said. “It’s over. It’s over. There is no way to recover from that. That just sounds like a lunatic.”
Carson, of course apologized, but he later appeared on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s radio show, to defend his rather bizarre views. He did what so many future-failed Republican presidential candidates have done when they got caught saying what they really believed. He blamed the “liberal media.”
“It was a 25-minute interview. They chopped, and you see what part they emphasized,” he told Hannity. “I simply have decided that I’m not really going to talk about that particular issue anymore. Because every time I’m gaining momentum the liberal press says, ‘let’s talk about gay rights.'”
Unfortunately, every reporter will now ask him about gay rights, anyway.
Carson has announced he’s forming his own presidential exploratory campaign.
That means he’ll be free to raise lots of money.
There’s even a National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee which has as its National Chairman a fellow named John Phillip Sousa, IV – the great-grandson of the renowned musician.
Sousa claims in the pitch for Carson’s campaign money, that, “There are some very strong reasons why having Dr. Carson on the ticket is the only way to ensure success in 2016. One reason is that he will win at least 40 percent of the black vote!”
Just five sentences later, Sousa proclaims “I personally believe Ben Carson would win more than 50 percent of the African American vote.”
That’s a 10 percent increase in the African-American vote in just a couple of paragraphs.
I didn’t read that letter to the end. He may have predicted Carson will get 120 percent of the black vote.
Carson’s and his right-wing supporters, who believe he’s going to attract black votes simply because he’s black, don’t realize that black voters have brains.
A neurosurgeon should know that.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net