蘑菇视频

Jun 1, 2015 4 min read

Ben Carson, Really?

I’d never heard of something called the “Southern Republican Leadership Conference” until last week.

So I was decidedly less than impressed when 958 of the Conference’s 1,400 attendees chose Dr. Ben Carson as their straw vote favorite.

Ben Carson’s 25 percent exceeded Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s by 4.5 percent, and Sen. Ted Cruz’s by a whopping 8 percent.

No other Republican in the ever-growing field of 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls got more than 5 percent.

That’s got to be a dilemma for serious-minded Republicans voters.

Carson, whose entire campaign platform has been built on his disdain for “political correctness,” is piling up a growing list of politically na茂ve head-scratchers.

“First of all,” he told Newsmax TV on May 5, “we have to understand how the Constitution works; the president is required to carry out the laws of the land, the laws of the land come from the legislative branch. So if the legislative branch creates a law or changes a law, the executive branch has a responsibility to carry it out,” Carson added.

So far, so good.

But his claim that

“we have to understand how the Constitution works,” rang hollow, though, right after that.

“It doesn’t say they (presidents) have the responsibility to carry out judicial law.”

Oh yes they do!

Presidents may dislike judicial rulings, and they might even publically disagree with them – but they’ve still followed them.

President Obama stood in front of Supreme Court justices a few State of the Union speeches back, and he railed against their Citizens United ruling. But the president has never indicated he’d ignore it.

Nor, if Carson ever became president, would he attempt to overrule the court if they decide to allow same-sex marriage in court rulings later this summer.

But we won’t have to worry about that, will we? Dr. Carson will never become the president.

Carson thinks, without any scientific or sociological proof, that homosexuality is a choice.

His uninformed opinion has something to do with people who land in the clink.

“Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight,” he says, “and when they come out, they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.”

Ok! I’ll bite. I asked myself that question, and the answer is — you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Carson makes such politically incorrect statements, you wonder from where he got them. “You know, Obamacare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery,” Carson once said.

Likening a plan that’s designed to help people maintain their health to a shameful scourge that has a residue which has lasted for centuries, might be politically incorrect for Carson and his Tea Party followers, but for most of us, it’s way over the top.

Granted, Dr. Carson is a celebrated neurosurgeon, who also majored in psychology at Yale University. But you’d have to wonder how he could assess the current president’s psychological make-up based on his sartorial splendor.

“When a colleague said the president, ‘looks clean. Shirt’s white. The tie. He looks elegant,’ Carson shot back: “Like most psychopaths. That’s why they’re successful. That’s the way they look. They all look great,” Carson concluded.

There’s no denying that Carson overcame great odds to become one of the most gifted medical talents in the world.

The son of a single mother, who was, for a time, forced to depend on the government in order to feed her future presidential candidate son.

You’d have to wonder, though, why Carson now sees little value in what was once termed the “War on Poverty.”

“There’s more poverty, more broken homes, 10x more people on food stamps…and all the things that were supposed to get better are much worse,” he once said.

He’s forgotten those times when food stamps helped keep him alive, I suppose.

So, some Republicans think they’ve got their man.

A guy, they think will help siphon off black votes.

I’ve yet to find a black voter who’ll vote for Ben Carson.

Not even take him seriously.

Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.nets