Posted on 02/08/2016 5:18:37 AM PST by Kaslin
Politics is a full-contact sport, but it's not OK to hit below the belt. Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio spent last week blaming frontrunner Sen. Ted Cruz for a problem that originated from Team Carson's own disorganization—even after media records and Iowa exit poll data cleared Cruz. Before you vote in your primary, you deserve the truth.
"You don't have to be a politician to tell the truth," Carson quipped in a recent debate. No, you don't. So let's start telling the truth. Unless you’re now a politician.
Carson finished 4th in the February 1 Iowa caucus. Cruz finished 1st, followed by Trump and Rubio respectively. Carson claims he was cheated out of votes because reports circulated—minutes before the caucuses began—that he was dropping out.
Carson's mismanagement of his campaign communication led CNN to report on TV (video here) and on Twitter that he was dropping out of the race. The Rubio and Cruz campaigns re-shared this news.
Rubio denied doing so on Fox News: "You'll never hear about me making up rumors that someone is dropping out in order to try to get votes." But investigative journalist Jennifer Burke showed that Team Rubio did disseminate the CNN report, perhaps even more aggressively than Team Cruz. Rubio persisted in blaming Cruz for an activity that his own campaign partook in last week in New Hampshire: "Obviously, we've all seen the reports of the rumors that he spread about Ben Carson."
Here's an excerpt of the CNN TV report:
CNN'S DANA BASH: "Our Chris Moody is breaking this news, that Ben Carson is gonna go back to Florida, to his home…regardless of how he does… He's going to go there for several days. And then afterwards, he's not gonna go to New Hampshire. He's not gonna go to South Carolina, he's going to go to Washington D.C… [for] the National Prayer Breakfast … where he got himself on the political map. …Very unusual!"
CNN'S JAKE TAPPER: "Plus, he's already announced that he's going to be coming out and speaking at 9:15 local, 10:15 Eastern, no matter whether or not we know the results, because he wants to get home…"
BASH: "Look, if you want to be President of the United States, you don't go home to Florida. …That's the end of the story."
CNN didn't do its homework in its haste to "break" a story. Instead, CNN led viewers to believe that a vote for Carson was a wasted vote. The bigger problem, however, is Carson's response.
NUMBERS DON'T LIE
Given that the CNN story broke minutes before official voting, it had little impact. We know this by analyzing the official 2016 Iowa caucus exit numbers. If you click the link and scroll to the section titled "When did you finally decide whom to support in today's caucus?" yo'll find these key facts:
Rubio: If anyone benefited from the last-minute report that Carson was dropping out, it was Rubio, who leads the top four Republican candidates with the number of voters who decided to vote for him "just today."
Cruz: He has the highest number of voters who said they decided "a week" or "a month" priorto the Iowa caucus to vote for him. So, a bulk of Cruz voters came to the caucus knowing that Cruz was their guy. They were uninfluenced by last minute news reports.
Overall: Trump and Cruz have the highest number of voters who said they decided "more than a month" before the caucus to vote for their candidates. Rubio was far behind in this regard and Carson has the fewest number of voters in this category.
Translation: if anyone benefited from indecisive last minute voters, it was Rubio! Cruz and Trump's voters already had their minds made up.
Cruz personally visited all 99 Iowa counties. His hard work paid off. Cruz has the highest number of voters (36%) who answered "Yes" to the question: "Did anyone personally contact you about coming out today to support your candidate?" Guess who has the fewest? Carson (10%).
Cruz braved the snow and humbly appeared before small crowds in quaint rural towns. Carson didn't have a solid ground game. Even on the day of the caucus, he was counting down the seconds until he could jet home to sunny Florida.
WILL CARSON PRAY FOR CNN?
Carson said he would "pray" for Trump after Trump deliberately questioned his mental stability. But I guess he's not praying for CNN, or Cruz, after this mistake.
"I don't want a person that's got pathological disease," Trump said about Carson. "If you're pathological—there's no cure for that, folks. There's no cure for that." Trump said that on purpose. Trump also intentionally stood before a huge crowd of Iowa voters and moved his belt buckle around while mocking and discrediting Carson's childhood story of failing to stab a friend because of the friend's belt buckle. Oddly, Carson never blamed his downward spiral from first place in Iowa—months ago—to fourth today on Trump's purposeful slander.
Which is worse, a mistake or intentional slander? Carson acts like the mistake is worse.
Instead of praying for CNN, Carson urged the media to crucify Cruz. He demanded an apology from Cruz and told him to fire his staffers. Cruz, out of total graciousness, made the mistake of apologizing to Carson. Carson responded like a petulant child and continued to tweet all last week about "dirty tricks."
But Cruz wouldn't let an ABC reporter bully him with the 'dirty tricks' line: "Is it a dirty trick to pass on your news stories? You're in the business. Would you think it was if I forwarding an ABC story or just a dirty trick to pass on CNN stories?"Boom.
"THE MOST DECENT MAN"
Ben Carson has a reputation for being honorable. I personally have admired him for years, using my columns to lavish praise upon his work as a surgeon and politician. I even dedicated a portion of my book to laud his healthcare reform plan. So, I'm heartbroken and disappointed by his recent behavior.
The stakes are too high to let Carson's claim of being cheated in Iowa go unchecked. We will lose the White House in 2016 to a socialist (Bernie) or a woman who treats confidential emails like cotton candy (Hillary) if we run a weak candidate. Last week, Carson fired over 50 of his staffers. His campaign had no traction going into Iowa. So why is he selfishly spreading rumors about the strongest Republicancandidate? Attention? Book sales? A TV gig? Who knows.
WORDS CAN NEVER HURT ME
Donald Trump immediately took advantage of Carson's claims and demanded a "new election." His sidekick, Sarah Palin, piped up on Facebook about "dirty tricks." Cruz pushed back, saying: "It seems his reaction to everything is to throw a fit, and I understand that Donald finds it very hard to lose. But at the end of the day, the people of Iowa spoke."
Trump curled up with his proverbial security blanket and quickly changed his tune from mean to docile. (It's dangerous to bully a strong man. You're liable to get hurt.) Within hours, Trump was telling talk radio host Hugh Hewitt that he has "always liked" Cruz and would consider Cruz for his VP. What a pivot!
A doctor. A businessman/reality-television star. Carson and Trump revel in their "outsider" status. Trump insists that he is pure as snow—incapable of being influenced by lobbies—because he "self-finances." Carson reminds us that he is "not a politician"—even as he runs for president.
The presidential race is the Super Bowl of politics. Just as it would be unsportsmanlike for the losing football team to falsely accuse the winner of cheating to hide its own lack of preparation, it is very unsportsmanlike for Carson, Trump and Rubio to call Cruz a cheat to mask their own weak ground games in Iowa.
Now you know the rest of the story. Ben Carson is now a politician. Share the truth. The stakes are high.
I read a post on FR showing a correction tweet from a CNN employee.
The news readers may not have made a correction on air, however, their employee apparently did.
What is the lie I repeated? Do you believe that Cruz is running a honest campaign?
RTFA.
Anyone interested can go to FR’s Iowa Forum, accessed through ‘Account’ and ‘My Locale’. There are a number of comments from caucus attendees about the experience in their own caucus.
I have spoken to numerous people from maybe 20 different caucus locations. Only a small fraction of caucus attendees were aware of the Carson ‘news’ and most of that small number heard it from someone other than a Cruz rep. It wasn’t even a topic at any of the several after-parties where I made an appearance.
I read the spin... Good luck with your Machiavellian man Cruz.
Thanks jjotto - I’ll take a look.
Take a look at Carson's own website under Events. (Note that there are no events listed for NH or SC)
https://www.bencarson.com/events
https://www.bencarson.com/events/san-diego-county-organizational-meeting
The only event listed is:
San Diego County Organizational Meeting
Feb-11-2016
Denny's Conference Room (No Host Dinner)
4280 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., San Diego, California 92117
The Ben Carson for President campaign invites you to a grass roots, organizational meeting.
I guess it takes a full two weeks to pick up some clean laundry.
BTW - if you plan on going to the above event, make sure you eat beforehand because as noted there is "No Host Dinner".
I also want to point out that Carson in Iowa was polling at anywhere from 9% to 10% and finished at 9.3%. Well within the +/- margin of error and just where he was expected to finish.
Don't get me wrong. Like Katie Kiefer I have a great respect for Carson as a surgeon and for his remarkable life story and accomplishments including becoming the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins hospital at the age of 32, even as Trump tried to say much of Carson's story was a lie and that Carson was pathological and no different from a pedophile and that Carson was just an "OK" doctor, only hired one nurse....
I grew up in Baltimore and became aware of Carson and his accomplishments as a surgeon well before he entered the national stage.
I never met the man in person but did see him talking to the parents of a very young child upon who Carson and his surgical team had just operated on for a massive brain tumor. I was in the OR waiting room at Johns Hopkins Hospital, waiting for my father to come out of surgery for a triple by-pass in 1997.
I saw Dr. Carson (and recognized him) in his scrubs when he walked into the waiting room and sit down and talk to the parents. I certainly wasn't trying to overhear anything but the waiting room was rather small so it couldn't be helped.
Dr. Carson so impressed me with his gentleness and kindness and humbleness as he gave them the good news about the surgery but also told them their child had a long road to complete recovery.
He held the hands of the child's parents and prayed with them and then hugged them.
A great and gifted surgeon but not IMO POTUS material from what I've seen of his campaign and on many of the very important issues.
He might however make a good Surgeon General or head of the VA. And he shouldn't burn bridges if that's what he wants. Perhaps that's why he's allowing Trump to cozy up to him now after Trump's very vile and unfounded insults against him, and if that is the case, then IMO Carson should stay retired and continue to do things that can do some good like the Carson Scholars project.
CNN screwed up and put out misleading information.
Members of two campaigns forwarded that information to people: Rubio's and Cruz'. Afterwards, the Rubio campaign joined in the chorus to attack Cruz, even though they had done the same thing, perhaps even more aggressively.
If you look at the 'who decided on who they were going to vote for when' data, Rubio was most likely to have gained from the dissemination of CNN's erroneous information.
Cruz supporters had their minds made up when they got there. Pretty much the same with Trump. But Rubio gained votes and blew past Carson, whom he had been polling behind.
Considering the Cruz campaign had been on the ground in Iowa, running an intense and virtually door-to-door campaign, that effort paid off.
So much for "questionable vote getting".
If you read Machiavelli, you'd know it is pretty much required reading for politics. I'd wager most, if not all of the candidates read it at one time or another.
Cruz guy Jeff Roe was involved in another campaign where someone was to have dropped out
I guarAHNtee that Rubio didn’t gain Carson supporters. Rubio’s support came from the country club set, belonging to mainstream liberal denominations, who even rejected the pleas of establishment Governor Branstad to support Christie.
“Cruz not really a frontrunner”
Your wishing does not create reality.
Long ago and far away...
Being a brilliant surgeon and even being a good man does not by itself make one a good fit for POTUS.
That this campaign will be rough is a given.
The Democrats have a felonious hag and a Communist running for the job, and the focus will be off them and on the Republican candidates, especially the 'outsiders'.
The more they can get the Republican candidates to tear each other down the better chance they will have in the general, whoever they run. Using that 'drama' to draw attention from Hillary's felonies, her server, and Benghazi, and the Dems positions on the issues (not to mention the ongoing saga of the Looting of America, now in it's most destructive eighth season) makes her a more viable selection, but she is getting an 'unexpected' run for her money from someone who promised a new wing of the FSA (white millennials) more freebies.
We do live in interesting times.
You may be right. I’d have to go back and look at the map again.
No believe CNN
Cruz didn’t pick up Carson voters?
Steve King tweet: “Carson looks like he is out. Iowans need to know before they vote. Most will go to Cruz, I hope”
King has little influence in Iowa, right?
The information in the article says that the vast majority of Cruz voters had decided a month to a week before the caucus that they were going to vote for Cruz. Nothing that happened within a couple of hours of the vote influenced that.
Recall, too that Gov. Branstad said that Cruz should be defeated at any cost after Cruz said he would do away with the ethanol mandate, too.
But I don't reckon the Governor has any influence in the state where 'corn in king', especially when the ethanol lobby is involved, either.
The article is opinion. One example: diminishing Palin as a “sidekick”.
Was she a sidekick when she supported (to great effect) Cruz in his Senate run?
Cruz has his good points, but his naked ambition his a major negative.
Touche... that is a good counter. I can't speculate on the weight and sway of Branstad v King.
Who, running for the office of the President of the most powerful nation on the planet is without 'naked ambition'?
The billionaire? The Guy who was a neurosurgeon at 23?
The Governor of Florida out to continue a dynasty?
Which one?
Really. Sheesh!
Of course they are ambitious, or they would not be running.
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