But what about your gaffes?
Sure enough, newfound conservative hero Ben Carson is still thinking about maybe running for president.
In Iowa, he sits behind only Mitt Romney as the first choice of Republican caucus-goers, according to a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll. He’s on the verge of running for president, close to making the decision, so he has to learn about politics. The real challenge, he says, is not to learn too much.
Oh, I think he's safe there. If he runs he'll be getting advice from the folks who previously catapulted people like Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Herman Cain into the spotlight. They'll be able to impart their collective wisdom to him on the first plane flight to Iowa somewhere between wheels-up and the time the first drinks are served. And yes, he will be presented as the alternative to Mitt Romney 2.0.
Carson has gotten into a lot of trouble for his gaffes, but I'm not sure enough notice has been taken of the less controversial fluff that makes up his let's-call-it political stances. He is a very good speaker who spends his time saying things no less nonsensical than the very bad speakers who appear before and after him at the same venues. He's a man who combines the policy chops of Sarah Palin with the self-assurance of Newt Gingrich, and I'm not sure that would wear very well on the campaign trail:
For Carson, the canary in the American coalmine is political correctness. It’s a theme that’s woven into his stump speech, one that he’s now delivering four or five times a week, in states in every corner of the country — he has only 13 free days on his calendar between now and the end of the year.
I ask Carson why he believes this minor moral failing is so crucial. “The reason that is very troubling to me is that it's the very same thing that happened to the Roman Empire,” he says, growing serious. “They were extremely powerful. There was no way anybody could overcome them. But these philosophers, with the long flowing white robes and the long white beards, they could wax eloquently on every subject, but nothing was right and nothing was wrong. They soon completely lost sight of who they were.”
The Roman Empire fell because of
political correctness and because of the failings of the Roman philosopher class? That's certainly a curious spin on history. And it's strange, slightly conspiratorial notions like this that dominate Carson's rhetoric.
He recommends W. Cleon Skousen's “The Naked Communist,” a 1958 book by the former FBI special agent and favorite of the right who lays out the strategy communists would use to take control of the U.S.
“It's really quite amazing,” Carson says. “You would think it was written last year.” But isn't it a stretch to think government officials, the representatives of the inefficient bureaucracy could be that cunning? “The majority of them aren't, I agree with you,” Carson says, leaving the thought hanging — but not all of them.
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The Republican base keeps gravitating over and over to people who specialize in alternative histories and alternative realities and who are willing to give the various conservative conspiracy theories all the necessary nods and nudges. If Carson runs, his main problem in the primaries won't be that he's an unconventional Republican voice, but that he's in fact a
very conventional Republican voice. There's very little new there, and what is new is new because it's just a little bit nuts.