Republican presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson has been well received lately, whether its because he just overtook Donald Trump in the Iowa polls, because he has said that Obamacare is worse than Slavery and 9/11, or just because he says the same xenophobic rhetoric that has become a characteristic of the conservative right.
All this coverage is hiding one important fact: Ben Carson doesn’t want to be president.
Here are the three reasons I believe that.
1. Ben Carson suspended his campaign to sell his book.
Despite gaining momentum in the Republican polls, Ben Carson has suspended his campaign from Oct. 15 to Oct. 28 in order to travel around the country promoting the release of his book A More Perfect Union. This is a curious move given the shortened campaign time during this election cycle, with fewer debates and an earlier primary. Even if this suspension is only for a short two-week window, it still may come back to bite him later.
2. He violates FEC regulations
Carson’s campaign and his book tour aren’t allowed to mix under FEC regulations, but his book tour is raising concerns because of who is footing the bill. As a presidential candidate, Carson isn’t allowed to take direct donation from corporations — be it money or service — but because Sentinel Publishing is the one hosting his book tour, Carson needs to be extra careful to keep his author and candidate life separate.
So far it looks like he hasn’t heeded that regulation. At an Oct. 9 Press Club luncheon, billed as a lunch with the author of A More Perfect Union, Carson made many statements regarding his foreign policy such as:
“And I’ll tell you, under a Carson administration, if another country attacks us with a cyber attack, they’re going to get hit so hard, it’s going to take them a long time to recover.”
Carson also answered questions about how he’d run his administration, saying:
“Well first of all, I would call for a joint session of Congress. And I would want them to know that under a Carson administration, we recognize that the people are at the pinnacle, and that we work for them, and they don’t work for us.”
Carson is doing a good job blurring the line between his presidential ambitions and his book selling and hopefully that will end up sinking him.
3. He actively disregards facts.
Ben Carson is perhaps one of the most brilliant neurosurgeons on the planet, which is odd when you examine his beliefs. According to this Buzzfeed article, Carson has summarized his view on the Theory of Evolution as:
“I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary, and it has become what is scientifically, politically correct.”
He views climate change with the same disbelief, saying in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle
I know there are a lot of people who say ‘overwhelming science,’ but then when you ask them to show the overwhelming science, they never can show it. There is no overwhelming science that the things that are going on are man-caused and not naturally caused.”
In the end, Ben Carson isn’t really a threat in the upcoming election. He only appeals to the hard right who still want to fight about homosexuality, and invade any country that blinks at the United States wrongly. He doesn’t have the charisma to pull voters from anywhere to the left of himself. Carson is doing well now because the GOP is running enough candidates to splinter caucus voters. Once the number of candidates is more compact, and Carson’s statements get more focused examination, he’ll be marginalized.
