Tom
Fontaine the
well respected reporter,
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review asked me to comment on the chances Dr. Ben Carson as
a presidential contender. Here is my take on Carson.
Iowa
Republicans love Dr. Ben Carson. He's been several times and gotten rousing
applause. He's very quiet but his fierce conservative position is admired. His
statement that "America is like Nazi Germany" went over well in 2014
at the Polk County, Iowa GOP straw poll, but probably would not be a good
campaign motto for him going forward.
He
just won the Georgia GOP County Chairs straw poll with 76%, which is
amazing.
He
and Carly Fiorina are the most interesting and "outsider" candidates
since neither has held office and is not a politician. One is black the other a
woman so that will split their attraction to the GOP caucus and primary voters.
They and the two Hispanic GOP contenders give this field lots of diversity.
However in Iowa 12-15 Repubs running for prez will no doubt badly split the
voters. So even though there is excitement about Carson (and Fiorina who
actually got even bigger buzz at the big GOP dinner recently), there are others
like Walker, Huckabee, Bush (Carson tied with Jeb in the latest poll for first
place), Rubio, and Ted Cruz who are seen as more likely to build a strong
caucuses machine.
On Iowa
caucus night organization is 97.6% of victory because you need your people one
at least, to push the voters in each of 1700 precincts.
Running
a nation is not exactly like separating twins in surgery. You've got to work
with a lot of powerful people in Congress and you have to balance all kinds of
contradictory and conflicting interests in a process we call "politics".
If you hate politics that's tough luck because government and Democracy
functions because of politics do you have to learn how to make it work.
One
of my wisest GOP activist friends in Iowa told me a couple of weeks ago,
"Steffen. All those goofballs posting dumb comments about Carson changing
things because he's not a Washington insider may be hoping for better. But, if
you don't know how it works – the political process- it's like a person whose
never flown a 747 taking over the cockpit. The plane may never take off but if
it does watch out for the landing!"
I'm
afraid on "D" Day (or "C Night" as we call caucus night), many Republicans may come to the same
conclusion. Or else maybe they'll give Ben Carson a victory as a symbolic
gesture as they did with Huckabee, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, and Michelle Backmann@
the Ames Straw Poll.
For
now he is certainly getting a lot of GOP buzz.
There are still spaces open in the FREE Internet class on the caucuses and presidential selection that I'm preparing for Sept 1. Reserve your place here.
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