Barack Obama is not going to be on the ballot in 2016, but there is a Black presidential candidate. His name is Dr. Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, who was thrust into the national spotlight after he gave a speech criticizing tax policy at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2013.
Carson’s speech was so well received people urged him to run for president. He is now part of a crowded Republican field that contains 16 other candidates.
Cheryl Thompson, San Diego County coordinator for the candidate’s 2016 committee, said she was inspired to join the Carson campaign after she saw him on television.
“When I first heard him speaking on a news broadcast, I was in awe of his common sense and ability to clearly articulate the problems we face and the solutions we need,” she said. “He struck me as a man of incredible wisdom and one who cut through ‘political correctness’ to address real issues in a respectful manner. I very much liked that he is not a typical politician, and I sensed he had deep concern for making America a better country for all, with special concern for young people and future generations.”
Carson comes from a medical background and while he has also written books and done some public speaking, he doesn’t have any political experience. But that doesn’t seem to bother Thompson and other supporters.
“Dr. Carson has amazing stamina and an excellent team,” Thompson said. “He is a proven success in surrounding himself with experts, studying the issues in depth, and applying sound judgment and Godly wisdom to accomplish things never before done. He has a passion for the future of America that is unbeatable, and a grassroots that shares his heartbeat for this nation. When Dr. Carson speaks, people listen!”
Thompson said Carson’s lack of political experience actually works in his favor.
“His lack of political experience is exactly what draws people to him; he’s not a member of the political class who got us into the messes our country is in today,” Thompson said. “We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results; that’s the definition of insanity,.”
According to Thompson, the issues Carson sees as most important to the country are the national debt, homeland security, the threat of cyber security, jobs, the sanctity of human life and education, as a means of improving the culture.
John Wood Jr., second vice-chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County and a former Republican nominee for Congress, said Carson has an outside chance of winning the presidency.
“He’s not a favorite to do so, but he’s consistently polled in the top half of a very competitive Republican field, and in an era of American politics where voters are viciously dissatisfied with status-quo politicians, they just may consider an inspiring newcomer like Ben Carson over familiar political figures on both sides of the aisle,” said Wood, who is an African American.
Wood compared Carson’s popularity to the rise of Donald Trump, who is currently the front-runner in the Republican presidential race.
“Ben Carson is popular because, like Donald Trump, he is an outsider to the corruption and stagnation of the political culture, but unlike Donald Trump he brings a genteel sense of wisdom and compassion to his political rhetoric,” Wood said.
However, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a Los Angeles-based political analyst, community activist and author, was less optimistic about Carson’s chances.
“Carson is almost as big an embarrassment to the GOP and electoral politics as Trump,” Hutchinson said. “He, like Trump, is a perverse political, very bad, reality show. He has no program, no message, minimal political presence and articulation, and absolutely no following among African Americans and minority voters. He’s propped up by the most extreme, retrograde, Neanderthal wing of the GOP; basically to beat up on Blacks, gays and Obama.”
According to Hutchinson, Carson makes offensive comments Republicans wish they could say.
“Mainstream GOP leaders can’t utter this idiocy,” Hutchinson said in a recent Huffington Post column. “They must always give the appearance that they are above the dirty, muddy, hate-slinging fray, so they leave it to a well-paid stalking horse like Carson, and to some extent Trump, to do their dirty work for them.”
Hutchinson was initially dismissive of Carson’s campaign, but it turns out he might be around for a while.
“Carson’s poll surge, though, does show that he’s got the eye and ear of legions of GOP rank and file voters,” Hutchinson said. “And in a season when voters again seem sick of the business as usual political crowd in Washington, and want some real excitement on the political stump, Carson may have more shelf life than he deserves. That’s enough to insure that Carson, for now anyway, is no laughing matter.”
Alan Keyes, a former Republican presidential candidate, also was dismissive of Carson’s chances. He said Carson talked a good game, but didn’t offer any new ideas.
“Ben Carson has proven himself to be somebody who has come from outside politics, but when you look at what he says and does, he’s standing pretty much where the GOP quislings have been standing,” said Keyes in an interview with Newsmax TV.
However, Keyes wasn’t impressed with any of the GOP candidates either. He said the rise of outsiders, like Carson, reflects a general discontent with the political system.
“Two things are true,” he told Newsmax. “I like the American people, and it’s time to put them back in charge. Both these parties represent an elitist faction that cares not at all for the will of the people of the United States, that’s why everybody’s unhappy.”
Dr. Ben Carson on the issues
On Abortion:
On his website, Carson supports the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act which would make it illegal to have an abortion more than 20 weeks after fertilization, allowing exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. It is not clear if he would push to overturn or uphold Roe v Wade.
My entire professional life has been devoted to saving and enhancing lives. Thus, the thought of abortion for the sake of convenience does not appeal to me. Many of us turn a blind eye to the wanton slaughter of millions of helpless human babies who are much more sophisticated than some of the other creatures, when nothing is at stake other than the convenience of one or both parents.
On the economy and the budget:
If you let the economy work the way it’s supposed to in a free market environment, there’ll be plenty of jobs and people determine their own value by what they know and what they are capable of doing.
Cut every agency spending by 10 percent, with no exceptions
Both Democrats and Republicans have strayed so far from the path of responsible financial policy that the concept of balancing the budget is foreign to them. I believe many of them simply cannot grasp the concept of only spending what you have. I do understand that making budgetary cuts will be painful, but it will not be nearly as painful as going bankrupt!
On Education:
In recent years, there has been a troubling trend of the U.S. Department of Education increasingly trying to dictate how children are educated in our primary and secondary schools. This must stop and Common Core must be overturned.
Our education system must be run by involved parents and engaged teachers and principals. Any attempt by faceless federal bureaucrats to take over our local schools must be defeated.
SOURCE: Ben Carson website
On civil rights:
- Homosexuality is a choice, but same-sex marriage is the law.
In a statement issued after the Supreme Court ruling, Carson wrote that he disagrees with the decision to legalize same-sex marriage but that it is now the law of the land. The physician previously has argued that homosexuality is a choice and that he personally believes marriage is between a man and a woman.
- Give gays rights, but not marriage, because it’s a choice
Ben Carson said that “a lot of people who go into prison straight, and when they come out they’re gay.” The remarks were made on CNN’s “New Day” in response to a question about whether Carson thought being gay was a “choice.”
Underdog status is no longer determined by race. Today, there are many young people from a variety of racial backgrounds who are severely deprived economically and could certainly benefit from the extension of a helping hand in education, employment and other endeavors. The real question is this: Who should receive extra consideration from a nation that has a tradition of cheering for the underdog? I believe underdog status is not determined any longer by race. Rather, it is the circumstances of one’s life that should be considered.
1960s: experienced racism in inner-city Boston and Detroit
“I grew up in inner-city Detroit and Boston at the tail end of one of those dark periods in America’s history. Slavery had long been abolished, but widespread racism remained. The civil rights movement was on the verge of completely transforming the social landscape, but such change often comes slowly. And today, decades later, I can still pinpoint the moment when I came of age regarding racism in America.
My brother and I were playing in Franklin Park in the Roxbury section of Boston when I wandered away alone under a bridge, where a group of older white boys approached me and began calling me names.
“Hey, boy, we don’t allow your kind over here,” one of them said. He looked at the others. “Let’s drown him in the lake.” I could tell they weren’t just taunting me, trying to scare me. They were serious, and I turned and ran from there faster than I had ever run before in my life. It was a shocking introduction for a little boy to the racism that ran through America at the time.
- Reparations for WWII Japanese ok, but not for slavery
“I can understand the idea of reparations for the Japanese American families who were unjustly interned during WWII. In that case, corrective action was taken at a time when many of the victims could actually benefit from it. In the case of slavery, however, there are neither slaves not slave owners currently living, so it seems unfair to require people who had nothing to do with slavery to pay for it. I understand the argument that the descendants of slave owners inherited property and large sums of money accumulated through slave labor, and are thus obligated to share the proceeds with the descendants of slaves. There is some legitimacy to such an argument, but no one can really quantify the percentage of assets derived from slave labor in order to distribute them. Furthermore, where do you draw the line for reparations in the past?
On Trayvon Martin:
On Trayvon: It’s not a perfect system, but it is best we have.
I understand why there’s a lot of outrage. You have a situation where you have a young black male, walking home, not doing anything incorrect, and he ends up killed and nobody suffers any consequences. On the surface, that would appear to be a gross miscarriage of justice. We have to decide whether we are willing to live with that or not.
SOURCE: ontheissues.org.
On Black Lives Matter:
Carson, spoke at a conference organized by Black conservative group Freedom’s Journal Institute (FJI) and titled “In Defense of Life: Why All Lives Matter.”
Candidates on both the left and right have been criticized for their declaration of those words—“All Lives Matter”—diminishing the goals of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is asking people to recognize that Black lives are devalued by our criminal justice system. Carson, however, told ThinkProgress that he sees the whole movement as divisive.
“We need to talk about what the real issues are and not get caught up in silliness like this matters or that matters,” he said at a rally to defund Planned Parenthood.
“Of course all lives matter. I don’t want to get into it, it’s so silly,” he continued. “Black lives are part of all lives, right? When we’re talking about a culture of life, then we ought to be talking about a culture of life and not allow ourselves to get caught up in all the divisive rhetoric and terminology and political correctness. It’s the reason we can’t make any progress as a society.”
On the Second Amendment (right to bear arms):
It was no accident that our founding fathers enshrined the right to own firearms as the 2nd element of the Bill of Rights, immediately after establishing our free speech rights. I cannot and will not support any efforts to weaken The Second Amendment.
The Second Amendment is a central pillar of our Constitution. Our founding fathers added it explicitly in order to protect freedom in the United States of America. It provides our citizens the right to protect themselves from threats foreign or domestic.
On the American tax code:
The current tax code now exceeds 74,000 pages in length. That is an abomination.
It is too long, too complex, too burdensome, and too riddled with tax shelters and loopholes that benefit only a few at the direct expense of the many.
We need wholesale tax reform.
And, we won’t get that from career politicians in Washington. They’re too deeply vested in the current system to deliver the kind of bold, fresh, new reforms that the American people are demanding.
We need a fairer, simpler, and more equitable tax system. Our tax form should be able to be completed in less than 15 minutes. This will enable us to end the IRS as we know it.
