We begin today's roundup with
Michael Tomasky's must-read over at The Daily Beast:
The only actual interesting thing about Carson is that he raises a question we rarely get the chance to contemplate: how can a man who is so obviously distinguished and brilliant in one field be such an across-the-board nincompoop in another? Because usually, if a man (or woman) is a good and knowledgeable and sure-footed doctor, or lawyer or department chair or any other position that could have been attained only through repeated displays of excellence and probity, then that person will also be a pretty solid human being across the board. He or she might be right wing or left wing, and he or he might have a weakness for French New Wave cinema or for Rock Hudson-Doris Day movies; but s/he won’t be an idiot.
But Carson is a political idiot. And it’s not all the Nazi and slavery talk, although those are certainly stupid and crude comparisons that can only be invoked by people who are dumb enough—and, I should add, insensitive enough—never to have given serious thought to the grisly particulars of what Nazism and slavery entailed. Whatever you think of Obamacare, you actually have to be a ghastly human being to compare it to practice in which horrors like this happened all the time, to many millions of people. [...]
So all that is plenty bad, but even more, I mean nearly everything else that comes out of this mouth. Just Google “Ben Carson ignorance” and you’ll see quickly enough that on subjects ranging from science to foreign policy to the Constitution to virtually any political or historical or policy topic on which he chooses to speak, he says something that has no basis in real-world fact.
Paul Waldman at The Week looks at how Carson's mild manner masks his extremism:
As The New York Times recently reported, Iowa voters in particular are enraptured with Carson's manner. "That smile and his soft voice makes people very comforted," said one farmer. "I believe someone as mild-mannered and gentlemanly as Ben Carson is just about the only kind of person that could" get things done in Washington, said another Iowan. You'd think they were talking about someone with moderate views who'd be able to get along and work with anyone, not someone who wants to outlaw abortion even in cases of rape and incest, thinks we should ditch Medicare, and holds to all manner of weird conspiracy theories. And that's not to mention all the stuff the retired neurosurgeon says about slavery and Nazis, his belief that Muslims should be barred from the presidency unless they offer a public disavowal of their religion, or his latest proposal to turn the Department of Education into something that sounds like it comes out of China's Cultural Revolution, in which he would have students report professors who displayed political bias to the government so universities' funding could be cut.
More analysis below the fold...
On The View, Bernie Sanders pointed out that Carson and the other Republican candidates are not on the "fringe" but represent the mainstream agenda of the party:
Janell Ross at The Washington Post calls out Carson for his insulting use of over-the-top (and inaccurate) metaphors on the campaign trail:
If nothing else, politically, Carson should at least contemplate some severe limits on their use because they turn real struggles — such as the health and welfare of the 40 million Americans uninsured before Obamcare — into little more than political props. The very real needs of the uninsured and the soaring health-care cost the remainder of Americans pay get pushed out of the political spotlight, as do potential policy solutions. Just look at what happened this weekend. [...]
At this rate, it's not hard to imagine how a Carson White House would require a special team of special assistants to the president who have to go around the world offering artful apologies and alternative explanations for President Carson's choices of words. More of his unbridled metaphors might well make foreign relations hard and domestic policymaking somehow even more divorced from the reality of Americans' lives than it appears to be right now.
David Corn at Mother Jones:
Religion and politics can make a volatile mix. In the case of Carson, this overlap is an essential part of his success. Yet it is odd that Carson has done so well with evangelicals when he is a high-profile and devoted member of a church that teaches that almost all evangelical Christians will soon join with Satan to oppose Jesus Christ [...]
Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist who has publicly voiced his commitment to this church and championed its core beliefs, most notably the view that God created the world in six days (literally) and that evolution is bunk (and encouraged by the devil). He has spoken at Seventh-day Adventist events. In a 2013 interview with the church's official news service, he was asked, "Are there ever any times when you feel it's best to distinguish yourself from the Seventh-day Adventist Church and what it teaches?" Carson replied, "No, I don’t."
In this interview, Carson went on to say that he was "proud of the fact that I believe what God has said…that I believe in a literal, six-day creation."
Carson did not explicitly mention other Seventh-day Adventist tenets. But a central belief of the church is that most other Christian denominations will end up working with the devil.
On a final note,
the editors at Five Thirty Eight assess a Carson vs. Trump matchup:
micah: So answer this question: Is this more about Trump or Carson? Or both?
natesilver: Both, but yeah — I think it’s more about Carson. Like Harry said, he looks like he’s winning the Huckabee/Santorum vote, and his profile is similar to a lot of past Iowa winners.
micah: So this seems like a localized Iowa thing and not necessarily evidence that Trump will fade nationally. [...]
hjenten: To me, the more interesting question is what happens when it’s clear that Trump is no longer ahead everywhere. His net favorability argues that he should be far lower in the polls, but he is converting a much higher rate of people who have a favorable view of him into “votes.” If he starts falling in one place, does the entire enterprise just fall apart?
natesilver: This all seems a bit overeager. The media narrative about Trump is in disarray right now. If you look at the Iowa polls, he’s clearly fallen behind Carson. If you look at national polls, he’s still ahead (and, in fact, seems to have recovered some of the points he lost after the previous debate). So voters go back and forth between reading stories implying that Trump is doomed and those that imply he’s invincible. I wonder if that dynamic doesn’t help him a bit. It seems like he’s totally Teflon when the real story is more that there isn’t all that much news in the campaign and the media is over-interpreting noisy data.