Ben Carson surprised me a little during Thursday night’s debate – not that I didn’t think he would do well. I had just interviewed him on The Herman Cain Show a few days earlier and I knew he was prepared and ready for whatever questions would be thrown at him.
But I was nevertheless impressed by the surgical precisions of some of his answers. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, since after all he is a brain surgeon. But for a guy who doesn’t have much experience on a stage this big, he really knew how to get down to it.
He would take on Hillary Clinton, he said, by coming against the Alinsky model that assumes people are stupid, and counts on stupid people to serve as the useful idiots that Democrats need in order to govern. Dr. Carson said his approach would not be to try to fool people but to educate them, which demonstrates that he understands something we say on this show all the time: The American people are smart enough to make the right decisions if they have all the facts. As it stands right now, the media don’t give them all the facts so leaders who are interested in the truth are going to have to do it.
There’s a difference between being dumb and being misinformed. The American people are not dumb but they’re misinformed by the mainstream media. Dr. Carson understands this well.
He also had shared a wonderful answer he gave an NPR reporter who wondered why he doesn’t talk about race more often. (Of course, I know only too well about the expectation of white liberal journalists that black men in the public arena need to constantly talk about race, as if we have no business talking about anything else.) Dr. Carson explained that, as a neurosurgeon, he sees inside people and gets a clear look at what really makes people who they are.
And it’s not their skin. This will come as news to the liberal media and to the Democrat Party, which are completely obsessed with race and think it is the key to everything in life. But what Dr. Carson understands (as do I) is that what really defines you is what’s inside you – the content of your character and your commitment to know what’s right and do it.
Finally, he answered a question about his presumed lack of political experience by reminding everyone that the greatness of this nation did not result from having lots of politicians around. It came, rather, from the ingenuity of the people in all walks of life. I’ve always found it hilarious in a sad sort of way that the political crowd judges people unworthy of service because they’ve spend their lives as something other than politicians. I thought I would have been a good president precisely because that’s not my background. My achievements have been in the private sector, where they expect results.
By the way, Dr. Carson’s achievements are in the field of science, which I thought the left considered one of the most highly esteemed fields imaginable. Isn’t that why they’re always going around complaining that Republicans are “anti-science”? You can’t very well be a neurosurgeon and be “anti-science.” Unless, of course, all “pro-science” really means is pro-left-wing nonsense used to justify the same tired old left wing ideas Democrats have been pushing since time immemorial.
One of those ideas, by the way, is that black people are supposed to stay on the Democrat plantation and not think for themselves. They really get upset when we do otherwise, but I don’t care and obviously neither does Dr. Carson.
His best line of the night came when he explained that he was the only one on stage who has ever removed half a person’s brain . . . “although, when you look around Washington D.C., you’d think someone had beaten me to it.”
Yes you would.
Ben Carson surprised me a little during Thursday night’s debate – not that I didn’t think he would do well. I had just interviewed him on The Herman Cain Show a few days earlier and I knew he was prepared and ready for whatever questions would be thrown at him.
But I was nevertheless impressed by the surgical precisions of some of his answers. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, since after all he is a brain surgeon. But for a guy who doesn’t have much experience on a stage this big, he really knew how to get down to it.
