In recent weeks I have been watching the individual
candidates for the Republican nomination for President of the United States
very closely. I remain unimpressed by Donald Trump, who is little more than a
firebrand spouting off useless insults, while either recommending bad policy,
or ignoring policy all together. Rand Paul has flamed out. Carly Fiorina has
too much in her past management of Lenovo and HP that raises questions. Rubio
is awesome, but severely weak on immigration. Ted Cruz is inconsistent. Wait,
what did I say? Yes, Ted Cruz is inconsistent.
This might surprise some of you that I would say that, but
hear me out. To be willing to call your fellow senators out on the Senate floor
takes courage. To call the Senate Majority Leader a liar to his face takes
brass. But to then refuse to call out Donald Trump on his bad policy, on his
flippant behavior, and his obscenities reveals a certain weakness.
Most assume that Cruz isn’t attacking Trump hoping to gain
the support of his supporters when he inevitably collapses. This, however, is
an unrealistic expectation. The reality of Trump supporters is that they are
not Tea Party people, as I first thought, and many of them are entirely new to
the political arena, brought in by the Donald, for the Donald. And based on a
lot of the comments they make on Trumpbart.com, they despise Ted Cruz because
he is A) Hispanic, and B) born in Canada, and therefore heir apparent to the
Birther Conspiracy Theory. Never mind that he was born to US Citizens, which qualifies him for US citizenship. To
acolytes of the Donald, Cruz, like Obama before him, will have to show his
birth certificate… Only Cruz really was born in Canada. He still qualifies for
US Citizenship, but many (not all) Trump supporters don’t really bother with facts, so they
will not bother with Cruz. Thus, his chivalry toward Trump is a useless gesture,
especially when Trump should be called to account for his nonsense.
That said, this is about why I think it is advantageous for
the non-Trump supporters of the GOP to rally behind Ben Carson, not an
dissertation on why Cruz is wasting a great opportunity, so I will get to the
point.
We have been lead for the last seven years by a hyper
partisan, name calling-bomb thrower. Personally, I am sick of it.
Ideologically, I am ready to move America way to the right, I am so sick of
feeling the presence of government in my life. I believe Doctor Carson will
give America the push to the right that we desperately need, leaving America
more free, and more prosperous than it has been in a long time. But Dr. Ben Carson can do
it in a unique way that has cause me to decide to endorse him.
I have long called for a calm to the storm. The main purpose
of my book, the Great Compromise: Getting Past the Emotional Nonsense Dividing
America (buy it here), is selling the idea of a calm to the storm we are in. I do believe
there is a very real left/right paradigm in America, with the Left selling
authoritarianism, and the right liberty. But the right hasn’t really sold that
message much in recent years. Worse yet, the left has done an excellent job
turning Republicans from your friends and neighbors, into the evil zombie
servants of the Dark Lord Cthulhu. Democrats are constantly accusing us of all
kinds of crazy things, usually stuff that their party, and Progressives in general,
were actually responsible for, rather than Conservative Republicans.
An actual study of history will show two things: 1)
Democrats have always based their success on racial strife and class divisions,
and 2) there was no moment in history where Merlin teamed up with Karl Marx to
wave a magic wand and magically make the parties switch sides. There was no
side switch. Ever. And again, Confederate Flag? Thiers, not ours. Also, as a
side note to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, you and your party didn’t pull the
Confederate Flag down in South Carolina, that was Indian-American Republican
Governor Nikki Haley and her Republican state Congress. Your party actually was
the party that put that flag there in the first place… But I digress.
As a part of demonizing the Right, Democrats have sewn this
idea that all Republicans are evil name calling bomb throwers into the minds of
Joe Public, one more thing they accuse us of that they are actually doing
themselves… Ann Coulter being a notable exception, but she was replaced by a
shape shifting alien Skrull several years ago during Marvel’s Secret Invasion (buy that one here)…
so we can ignore her.
One can see the overt genuine malicious racism from the Democratic
Party already, with MSNBC and CNN already calling him racially charged names,
and going to extremes to try to discredit him, only to end up having their “investigations”
fall apart, one by one. One cannot help but recognize a genuine animosity
toward free thinking minorities, and it’s not just Carson, that racism is
targeting Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as well.
But putting all that aside, Ben Carson’s dignity, poise and
calm is the central reason that reasonable Republicans of all stripes should
flock to him. He is rational, calm, and thinks things through. Yet he is
unashamedly religious. His philosophy is soundly center-right, maybe not as far
to the right as Ted Cruz, but certainly comfortably right of center. Most of us
in the activist community would be happy with him, but he certainly should not
scare off the moderates, and based on his polling, he is not scaring off either
the Conservatives, or the moderates.
Based on polling, Carson is in a position to beat Trump, and
Hilary Clinton. The latter should be our larger concern. Of the various
Republican candidates, Carson is beating her by a whopping ten points. His
strength of character and strength in the polls aught to give those of us still
clinging to other candidates pause. We have, now, a pretty solid idea of who
can and cannot win this election. We aught to consider siding with Carson
because, quite simply, he is our best chance to win.
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