Posted on 07/13/2014 4:41:07 PM PDT by kingattax
Since his breakthrough speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Dr. Ben Carson has been in the political spotlight.
In this video, Carson answers the question: Are you a Republican? What might surprise you is that Carson is not a Republican, he is an Independent.
(Excerpt) Read more at ijreview.com ...
You set the bar pretty low. How do you know he would be better than anyone on the conservative side?
I don’t know. I do believe he is better than anyone on the liberal side. He has, from what I see so far, good conservative values. Even better than some on the conservative side. But time will tell.
He is not a politician. And I think that is a plus because, right now, I think most all politicians suck.
“I actually would favor a voting system, in which there were no political designations on the ballot, where you actually had to know what the person believed. You had to know how they voted in the past.”
That second part, which you specifically ignored, would, by definition, require a test at the polls. Please explain why you support a test at the polls.
You wrote:
Dr Carson is proposing the idea of removing a candidate’s party affiliation from the ballot to prevent voters oblivious to the world around them from voting on a straight party-line basis for ANY political party. Which will in turn hopefully encourage them to further look into important issues facing their state and nation. It has been tried on the municipal level in a few states and I have never heard the complaint of order discrimination by name. Whether communities will in practice educate themselves as an act of participatory democracy (not test, obviously) as he is assuming on the most basic level is the real question.
There is no way to literally force citizens to know what is on a candidate platform. Hell, the candidates themselves have enough trouble making their own positions clear. He is simply promoting the reform as one in which voters will take the opportunity to better identify where they and the candidates identify on the ideological spectrum so that a more democratic and more transparent process ensues.
I also believe that voting should be a process whereby the candidates themselves are the people to which we elect, not the banner under which they run but the banner should at least be acknowledged on the ballot, as they are the organization that backed the candidate and got them to where they are. :)
Yes, there is a way to literally force citizens to know what is on a candidate's platform. A test at the polls. It is a horrendous idea, one that has been tried before. It seems to be exactly what Ben Carson is suggesting:
He said: “I actually would favor a voting system, in which there were no political designations on the ballot, where you actually had to know what the person believed. You had to know how they voted in the past.”".
Just taking away the candidate's affiliation doesn't magically tell you how they voted. The way to accomplish what he's calling for, where you "have to know", his words, is a poll test.
None of this is surprising. Ben Carson also believes that the Second Amendment is a regional, not universal right: Asked by Glenn Beck for his thoughts on the Second Amendment, Mr. Carson said:
"It depends on where you live. I think if you live in the midst of a lot of people, and I'm afraid that that semi-automatic weapon is going to fall into the hands of a crazy person, I would rather you not have it," Carson elaborated. However, if you live "out in the country somewhere by yourself" and want to own a semi-automatic weapon, he added, "I've no problem with that."p
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