Posted on 02/03/2016 2:04:43 PM PST by springwater13
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz said he will not discipline staffers who spread a rumor that Ben Carson was going to drop out of the race in an attempt to get Carson supporters to caucus for Cruz in Iowa. Cruz appeared on the Mike Gallager Show on Wednesday and talked about staffers who pushed a report that Carson wasn't going on to campaign in New Hampshire or South Carolina.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
This is the CNN report in question:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
Male: Ben Carson, what have we learned?
Female: That’s right, our - we should say, our Chris Moody is breaking this, this news, that Ben Carson is gonna go back to Florida to his home, regardless of how he does tonight here in Iowa. He’s gonna go there for several days, and then afterwards he’s not gonna go to South Carolina, he’s not gonna go to New Hampshire. He’s gonna come to Washington, DC, and he’s gonna do that because the National Prayer Breakfast is on Thursday. And people who have been following Ben Carson’s career know that that’s really where he got himself on the political map, attending that prayer breakfast and really giving it to B, President Barack Obama at the time. And he became kind of a hero among uh, conservatives as well as evangelicals especially. But
M: And it’s very unusual
F: VERY unusual
M: to be announcing that you’re going home to rest for a few days, not going on to the next site. Plus, he’s already announced that he’s gonna be coming out and speaking at 9:15 local
F: Mm-hm
M: 10:15 Eastern, no matter whether or not uh, we know the results, uh, because he wants to get home and get ahead of the storm.
F: Look. If you want to be President of the United States, you don’t go to Florida. I mean, that’s just bottom line. That’s the end of the story. If you want to signal to your supporters that you want it, that you’re hungry for it, that you want them to get out and campaign, you gotta be out there doing it too, and he’s not doing it. It’s very unusual.
M: Very unusual news, that CNN has just learned, CNN’s Chris Moody breaking the story. Wolf, back to you in Washington.
Wolf Blitzer: VERY significant news indeed, guys. Thanks very much.
END OF RECORDING
You could be right but right now it appears incompetence from Carson.
There is nothing “dirty” about what Rubio, Cruz, and Trump — and yes all three campaigns transacted this information during the evening— did communicating this “breaking news” from CNN.
Carson wanted to communicate that he was not going immediately to New Hampshire or South Carolina. That is significant and CNN alleged that it suggested a lack of seriousness going forward by Carson. That is an important and timely piece of information that Caucus goers should have. The campaigns DID NOT say Carson was quitting. That implication was there but to pretend it was stated is deliberate deception and I have seen a lot of that here at FR.
The communication relayed by various campaigns— including Cruz— simply offered that FACT— as a basis for preferring one of the other three top candidates.
That is absolutely fair.
There are several unfair things about this present discussion:
1. Carson lies— yes that is now what it is— about how this is like Obama and other direct deceptions of the Executive branch.
2. Carson refuses to take responsibility for his reckless statements about not going to the primary states and refusing to actively rebut CNN’s report but rather passively assigning it to other rival campaigns so he can play the victim card.
3. Trump now says he needs a re-do because it was all so unethical. Trump character assassinated Carson and Carson did and continues to ignore the flagrant ad hominem attacks that took Carson out of the lead.
4. Here at FR we are asked to join in a circular firing squad against the Cruz campaign— probably because people think they can bring Trump back to the forefront. It is flatly deceitful at this point to continue to suggest that what the Cruz campaign did was unethical or dirty. It is at best foolish and at worst a bad mistake to say he is not going to NH and SC. It is wrong to leave the Iowa caucus early. The implication was clear in a high stakes event. He refuses to own his attitudes and arguments. Kasich blew off Iowa. He is not saying he was cheated. He decided it didn’t matter to him. Carson can own up to his poor tactics and he could also muster the courage to confront the ethical ad hominem train wreck that is the Trump campaign.
Bull!
Look....The Cruz staffer....picked off Kings tweet about the story CNN put out that Carson was going to leave the race.....and it went from there. When Carsons people picked up on it they put out a denial of it.....which the Cruz people did not send out.....and thus Carsons complaint rested on that they didn’t.
As I see it Carsons been dabbling in victim hood from the get go for one reason or another....he’s been whining about race, rudeness, fairness etc. almost as much as Trump...Both these guys are operating in the big boys park now and both of them somehow expect they can operate like a surgeon and a business man in a field neither have operated in before. Both complain about political correctness yet neither of them are mindful of their own blunders.
Ok...so now they know the park they’re in they need to stand up and pay attention to what they’re doing.....not announce to the world they have to fly to Florida to change suites....not bellyache when they lose the first state election.......the two of them sound like sour grape losers and that’s all there is to it....and they both feed the news cycle exactly what they want to hear.
Cruz knows full well how nasty this thing gets....he’s had to take his own “unfair” punches and deal with them when and if he chooses to do so when in Washington as well as on the campaign trail. Short of the attack on his kids he’s not playing the victim card thus far and I sure hope he doesn’t.
The other two need to get some skin on .....or neither will last the clinton machine past the first round.
There was a tweet by one of Cruz’s guys saying that somebody from Carson’s NH team had confirmed it.
Carson’s NH team all quit the Carson team the day before, saying they loved Carson but needed to help a conservative who has a chance to win: Ted Cruz. That sounds a LOT like people who had just been told there wasn’t going to be a NH canpaign because Carson was about to quit.
My guess is that the Cruz guy spoke to one of the Carson NH people and was told that they had quit because Carson had told them he was going to announce his resignation. And that’s why Cruz’s 2nd memo to his precinct people said that there was going to be a big announcement by Carson.
But Carson changed his mind about letting people know what he had told CNN about not campaigning in NH and SC, so he said he was not quitting, just going home for a while before leaving Florida in Wed. CNN had reported that he was going to DC on Thursday for the prayer breakfast. So Carson’s people never did say he would campaign; they just said that he hadn’t quit yet. He’s still not campaigning though, which was what Cruz’s people were talking about.
Because, as CNN said in the report in question, “Look. If you want to be President of the United States, you don’t go to Florida. I mean, that’s just bottom line. That’s the end of the story.”
When Carson changed his mind about letting people know he was quitting, the Cruz guy deleted his tweet, probably to not get the NH source in trouble. And Cruz apologized rather than expose that Carson had changed his mind.
That’s what I suspect happened.
HE could, but will he? Will be interesting to see who Carson backs when he does drops out...
Ouija Board? Tarot Cards? It's not like any of them are church-goers...
There weren’t any planned meetings in NH or SC that I could see on Carson’s official campaign website as of this morning. There were no campaign events listed for ANYWHERE.
Which would be awfully strange for somebody who wasn’t throwing in the towel.
After eight years of Obama letting his minions get away with crap, you think we would have learned by now.
Spreading rumors of Carson dropping out.
Insinuating Palin took a bribe for endorsing Trump.
At the very least a backroom ‘hey knucklehead, tone it down’ ẃould of sufficed.
The voice of reason. /s
You’re a regular Nancy Drew. /s
Gabriel specifically said it was somebody in Carson’s NH team who confirmed that Carson was out. Know what we know about CArson’s NH team? They quit Carson’s campaign the day before, to join Cruz’s campaign because (they said) they wanted to work for someone who had a chance to win.
That tweet was deleted, probably when Carson made clear that he was NOT gonna let people know he was quitting yet. Probably Carson wanted to make his own announcement, and then the CNN report got out there where people knew what it meant before Carson wanted them to know it.
Gabriel has Soros connections. Are you a Soros fan now?
Where is the source for what you’re saying?
The transcript for the CNN report is at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3392448/posts?page=121#121
I’d post it here but I don’t want to have to fix all the apostrophes.
The big issue was more about Carson not campaigning in NH and SC. And of that, CNN said: “Look. If you want to be President of the United States, you don’t go to Florida. I mean, that’s just bottom line. That’s the end of the story.”
I think you will have to come up with more than that to defeat the revealed substance of what is going on here.
Cruz won Iowa and is leading conservatives to a revolutionary position of strength.
There was not a record turnout in Iowa— exceeding Obama’s 2008 record— because of this meaningless conflict.
There was a record turnout for conservatism because Cruz has done the hard work of running a ground campaign for months in Iowa. Carson and Trump think they can take casual shots from the sidelines of politics and denounce any practical efforts at gaining votes on the ground as unethical.
This is crybaby politics and I hope voters continue to endorse Cruz’s deliberate careful and effective approach.
BAldwin flat-out lies about what the CNN report said. The transcript of the CNN report in question is at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3392448/posts?page=121#121 if you want to see it with apostrophes. Otherwise, here it is:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
Male: Ben Carson, what have we learned?
Female: That’s right, our - we should say, our Chris Moody is breaking this, this news, that Ben Carson is gonna go back to Florida to his home, regardless of how he does tonight here in Iowa. He’s gonna go there for several days, and then afterwards he’s not gonna go to South Carolina, he’s not gonna go to New Hampshire. He’s gonna come to Washington, DC, and he’s gonna do that because the National Prayer Breakfast is on Thursday. And people who have been following Ben Carson’s career know that that’s really where he got himself on the political map, attending that prayer breakfast and really giving it to B, President Barack Obama at the time. And he became kind of a hero among uh, conservatives as well as evangelicals especially. But
M: And it’s very unusual
F: VERY unusual
M: to be announcing that you’re going home to rest for a few days, not going on to the next site. Plus, he’s already announced that he’s gonna be coming out and speaking at 9:15 local
F: Mm-hm
M: 10:15 Eastern, no matter whether or not uh, we know the results, uh, because he wants to get home and get ahead of the storm.
F: Look. If you want to be President of the United States, you don’t go to Florida. I mean, that’s just bottom line. That’s the end of the story. If you want to signal to your supporters that you want it, that you’re hungry for it, that you want them to get out and campaign, you gotta be out there doing it too, and he’s not doing it. It’s very unusual.
M: Very unusual news, that CNN has just learned, CNN’s Chris Moody breaking the story. Wolf, back to you in Washington.
Wolf Blitzer: VERY significant news indeed, guys. Thanks very much.
END OF RECORDING
I congratulate you for your convoluted spin of the latest dirty tricks from the Cruz campaign. Did you make it up yourself or is it official Cruz campaign propaganda? You do realize of course that stretching the truth and the meaning of words is frowned upon by many people?
The truth here is that Cruz is posing as a devout Christian and the most pure conservative in the race... yet he has hired a team of experts who specialize in manipulating social media, and just plain outright lying about basically everything. I don’t know... he is a lawyer... it worked for the Clintons and Obama... maybe it is a winning strategy. But I find it hypocritical and I have now gotten off the Cruz train. I find it uncomfortable to defend the crap he has been pulling.
As mentioned before...Carson creates his own situations.....this was just another one.
Not really. Gabriel said he confirmed with someone in CArson’s NH crew. That NH crew had all quit the Carson campaign the day before, saying they love Carson but needed to work with someone could win (Cruz). That sounds like people who have been told that Carson would not campaign in NH because he would be announcing his resignation.
Chances are good that Gabriel DID talk to someone from Carson’s NH campaign, and was told that they had left the campaign because Carson was going to resign. But then Carson had to change the story so that the IA voters would still think he was in it - so he could have his resignation announcement on his own terms, which is fair of him to want and I think Cruz probably recognized that and it’s why he apologized.
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