Posted on 08/30/2014 7:03:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Ever since Ben Carson famously criticized President Barack Obama's health care policies during a speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, many conservatives have rallied behind the retired neurosurgeon's conservative, anti-big government rhetorics and urged him to run for president in 2016. But despite passionate support among his fans, how will he overcome the fact that he has no political experience?
Carson has not officially announced his candidacy and plans to wait and see how November's midterm Congressional elections pan out, but he has already won a straw poll in Iowa and his book sales have beaten that of Hillary Clinton. Carson won the Polk County Iowa Republicans dinner straw poll, gaining an astonishing 62 percent of the vote Sunday night, and his new book, One Nation: What We Can All Do To Save America's Future, is expected to remain No. 1 on next week's New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list, a spot the book has claimed since June. By comparison, the candidate that is the favorite to many liberals, Hillary Clinton, her book, Hard Choices, is No. 6 on that list.
Although winning a small poll of just 261 people at a dinner and having a best-selling book don't quite mean much in the realm of total support for a presidential election, it should be noted that The National Draft Ben Carson Committee has raised over $8.7 million, according to the Washington Post. By comparison, Clinton's super PAC, Ready For Hillary, has raised $8.25 million.
"Sometimes I realize there are forces greater than me," Carson said at the Polk County Republicans dinner. "I am an instrument that's being used to help restore this country."
However, should Carson somehow win the Republican nomination, how will he appeal to the middle majority of the voting electorate in a potential general election? With the majority of Americans placed in the middle of the political spectrum, most general election candidates tend to centralize their stances on issues. Is that even possible for Carson to do with his far-right stances on most political issues?
At this point in the 2016 election cycle, it is hard to gauge whether political support this far out from elections will be sustained. Generally, as FOX's Bill O'Reilly pointed out on his show "The O'Reilly factor" on Tuesday, it is hard for a candidate that has never held a political office to maintain support because they have a hard time justifying their qualifications for running the entire federal government. O'Reilly pointed out that many Republicans will look at Obama, who took office with no executive experience, and claimed that he failed in his management practices.
"There is no question that I haven't spent a lot of time in government. That doesn't mean that you can't make sure that you have people around you who have spent that time," Carson told O'Reilly. "I think the thing that is actually more important is wisdom and understanding and knowing how to use facts."
Carson added that it would not be new to him if he were thrust into a position where he had relatively little experience, but that has not stopped him from succeeding before. The key, Carson said, is coordinating the minds of many to accomplish the same goal.
"When I conducted some very complex operations, including things that hadn't been done before, it required pulling people together," Carson said. "Some of them knew a lot of things that I didn't know about different areas. But being able to coordinate those things and merge them into something that is successful, that's what we are going to need to do."
When O'Reilly asked him about how he would handle "uncharted waters" of dealing with international politics and how he would deal with other countries, Carson said he would simply have to rely on his generals and others in his administration that would have foreign policy experience.
Fox News' Chris Wallace said on Thursday that he doesn't think Carson has a "serious chance to be president."
"He is not selling himself all the time. I think he would have a lot to debate if he were going to run. Whether or not he is ready for the rough and tumble of debates and a lot of issues he has never had to tackle," Wallace said. "To me, it would be like taking one of these senators and putting them in an operating room and telling them to operate on somebody's leg."
He has to make his team known early on. Specifically VP, Sec State, AG, HS. HHS, VA and EPA.
Surgeon General
That being said. He would be more than adequate as a POTUS. If he could get elected. The only thing really necessary to be a good POTUS is common sense, a good moral structure, be able to hear other points of view, and make decisions and stick with them. None of these are things that Obama possesses.
Getting elected is the only hard part of being POTUS. the rest is no different than running any other complex organization.
The point is, Eisenhower had vast, vast, experience as an executive of vast numbers and complexity and in world affairs, and he was SOUGHT OUT FOR PRESIDENT.
This old doctor is just a guy trying to go from retirement to President of the United States of America, you can’t be serious comparing him to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
As far as experience campaigning, he already beats out Eisenhower in that, which means nothing.
RE: Surgeon General
Nah, too little to do.
HHS Secretary is more like it.
I, for one, am tired of having to vote for X because he (she) will not get as much deeper as Y. It's time to elect someone with common sense, not a political pedigree.
Yeah that too...
I think he'd make a great Surgeon General!
You're saying that getting the cooperation of three self-serving officers, Bernard Montgomery, Charles de Gaulle, and George Patton, whilst satisfying the goals of Roosevelt and Stalin -- at the same time gaining the admiration of our troops as well as winning the wasr -- did not constitute a very keen grasp of politics?<0> Hmmmm ---
I have a bad feeling that we’ll once again destroy all of our own candidates in short order. We don’t need the Democrats to take our candidates out, we do that very handily ourselves.
There will be none pure enough to be the Republican nominee.
I didn’t say anything of the sort. Eisenhower wasn’t a butt boy for the RNC. Neither is Carson. Any other pointless self serving remarks that show how brilliant you are?
If he runs, the Democrats will pay good money to dig up at least around a half dozen white women to say that he sexually harassed them all.
You heard it here first.
Do you know what surgeons do?
Yes, I do have this "self-serving" response
I'm brilliant enough to know that's exactly what you said, and to respond in the same vein to your brilliant lnsight, as well as to your brilliant response, my brilliant FRiend.
And actually, Dr. Ben Carson does obviously have enough political sense to gain a rather large following from the voter base, despite your brilliant observation to the contrary.
. But despite passionate support among his fans, how will he overcome the fact that he has no political experience?
Lack of political experience did not seem to hurt Obama? Along with lack of intelligence, common sense, leadership ability to mention a few other things......
You’re a genius. I like Carson and think he’s electable. Wanna make any more genius assumptions about who I think has political sense, moron.
Eisenhower held the allies together during World War II and kept peace between the U.S., British, French, Polish, and other army commanders and governments. His job was very political and he did it very well.
Democrats are the least of his worries. He has to survive the other Republican candidates ripping him to shreds long before he has to worry about the Democrats.
You’re right. I meant he was no career politician who ran for elected political office. Should’ve been more explicit.
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