Not the preferred starting point for a Republican presidential candidate, but
definitely an oft-used one.
Ben Carson—a Washington outsider, a world-renowned neurosurgeon, a favorite among tea-party insurgents—had a message Thursday for the Republican Party's most influential establishment figures: I'm not "crazy."
When your opening act is explaining to people that you are not, in fact, as insane as you might first sound, you are officially starting off your presidential race as a second-tier candidate at best. But this is conservatism, a movement that is willing to forgive a whole
lot of crazy if you just patiently explain that it's all a plot against you.
Speaking to the Republican National Committee's winter meeting, Carson tried to challenge the caricature of him as a right-wing zealot by addressing—one by one—many of the individual controversies that have surrounded him, and dismissing them as lies from "the liberal media."
If you have to address "many" of the various odd-sounding things you've said "one by one," that may drop you down to a third-tier candidate. (And if your staff needs a flowchart to keep track of them, you might be Rick Santorum. Bah-DUM-dum.)
Carson defended, among other things, his statements about Obamacare being the worst thing since slavery; comparing present-day America to Nazi Germany; and calling last year's Veterans Affairs scandal "a gift from God" because it revealed holes in the system.
"I stand by those" remarks, Carson told the crowd. "I don't think there's anything crazy at all."
Well all right then, done and done. It's not that those were wacky things to say that the schemers of the liberal media took out of context, it's that he said those very odd things and really means them, which makes them not odd anymore. Healthcare reform is like slavery, America is kinda like Hitler, and thank God for all those sick vets.
I'm losing hope that Mr. Dr. Ben Carson is just doing this to raise his stature and fetch better speaking fees. He seems serious about actually running.