Posted on 02/06/2016 1:13:18 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
In an effort to draw attention to his Kim Kardashian-style vanity campaign, Ben Carson took his contrived outrage mongering against Cruz to a new level yesterday. During one of his numerous media appearances over the past three days, which is more actual campaigning than he’s done for the past few months while he took a hiatus to sell books, Carson compared Cruz’s behavior in Iowa to Hillary following the Benghazi tragedy.
Enough is enough.
If Carson wants to talk about the depths of deception and dishonesty he should “start looking at the man in the mirror.”
I was born and bred in Baltimore and grew up in the shadow of Dr. Carson’s stupendous reputation as ‘America’s Surgeon.’ I’ve never thought anything but admirable sentiments towards him, but his behavior this week reveals a man who is either running a scam or should be disqualified from running for office due to incompetency.
A few months ago, when Donald Trump referred to Carson as pathological and compared him to a child molester, Carson had nothing to say. He was completely impotent. And in fact, his numbers tanked shortly thereafter. Yet, when Cruz’s campaign took Carson’s absurd and bizarre campaign statement about going home to Florida as a sign he was dropping out of the race, Carson went nuclear. And despite Cruz’s gracious apology, Carson accepted it… but then went on the media circuit savaging him.
What gives?
The definition of a coward is someone who “lacks the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.” When facing Donald Trump, Carson knew he would endure unpleasant things by confronting him. Whereas when confronting Cruz, Carson knows that he will never attack him personally. Moreover, he knows that because the media is out to destroy Cruz they will grant him an audience for his languishing campaign and slurp up any allegation he launches at him, irrespective of the facts or soundness of his charge.
What is more insidious is that Carson is using this attack to further obfuscate his seemingly scam campaign and in doing so he is actually proving the point of the Cruz campaign and why they thought he was dropping out in the first place.
Why did Cruz and other campaigns believe that “returning to Florida” might signal he was dropping out? First, because he told the media before the caucuses were even finished of his odd post-caucus plans. Even two of Carson's former aides have gone on the record stating this was a mistake and all but clearing the Cruz campaign. Add to that the fact that Carson has not, until mid-day Friday, held a single event in New Hampshire and South Carolina during the heat of the campaign. Just this week, he has let go 50 “non-essential” employees (non-essential, just like federal bureaucracies!). He has, by any objective measure, dropped out of the race. Yet, he is only in the race to the extent that he is attacking Cruz on TV and raising money off his feigned outrage…..not so that he can use that money to campaign for the nomination, but continue reinvesting it in his direct mail vendors. Thus, the circuitous cycle of a what appears to be a scam operation that has raised almost $54 million – more than any other candidate except Bernie Sanders – but burn through 88% of it and poll roughly the same as Carly Fiorina in New Hampshire.
There are other candidates who have not performed well, such as Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Carly Fiorina. But those candidates, especially after they tanked in the polls, didn’t raise significant sums of money and used the few dollars to barnstorm through the early states. Rick Santorum actually had more campaign stops in the final week of the Iowa campaign than anyone else. Where has Ben Carson been?
What appears to be the actual deception and dishonesty here is Ben Carson’s fleecing of his donors and supporters. The media is still not interested in asking Carson tough questions as to why he has not made it back to the early states. He stopped in North Carolina yesterday but didn’t go to South Carolina, which holds its primary sooner. What has he done with all the money he raised?
In some sense Ben Carson is right about Ted Cruz. Carson’s behavior this week demonstrates that indeed Cruz does owe him another apology. Cruz should apologize for thinking Carson would respond to his apology honorably. As such, the only logical conclusion anyone could make from such a bizarre campaign announcement, which came on the heels of months of sparse campaigning in Iowa, is that he was dropping out of the race. Nobody would ever suspect he’d spend the week doing vanity media, raising millions of dollars, and not stepping foot in New Hampshire or South Carolina..unless the entire campaign served as nothing but the sole purpose of raising money. There isn’t a strategy on earth where a candidate can finish fourth in Iowa, skip most campaign days leading up to New Hampshire and South Carolina, and then somehow take the rest of the nation by storm.
It’s a real shame what politics can do to people. Unfortunately, while Carson has been slow to pick up the policy knowledge of a career politician he has been quick to learn the worst acts of chicanery that are characteristic of career politicians.
Had Cruz run such a vanity campaign, raising millions spending most of it on fundraising mailers while declining to run a serious campaign, the media would be asking tough questions. Had Cruz announced he couldn’t find the nearest dry cleaners and was returning home for a week to get some clothes, thereby missing the critical campaign days in the important states, he would have been the subject of endless parodies on Saturday Night Live.
But given that Carson is using his own exercise in self-parody to project dishonesty on Ted Cruz, the media is stone silent. And meanwhile, Ben Carson is having the time of his life.
Shows how little you know about what happened. Cruz did not apologize for forwarding the story the Carson campaign gave to CNN (and then tried to take back later), but rather Cruz apologized on behalf of his campaign for not being quicker about clarifying the CNN clarification that came later.
Who said Carson was quitting?
It’s ok, I know you won’t tell me. I keep asking and I get attacked. Every. Time.
Oh, yeah. It should be a real Carson-Cruz donnybrook this evening... assuming someone wakes the good doctor from his mid-debate nap. Can’t wait to see his Florida-fresh clothes, though! Perfectly creased pants could earn him an endorsement from David Brooks.
Cruz needs to double down on why forwarding the CNN story was the correct thing to do, and blame the Carson campaign for getting this story started in the first place.
The only thing Cruz apologized for on behalf of his campaign was not getting the secondary clarification story from CNN out to his field staff quicker.
Oh I thought it might be Carsons new narrative that Cruz should be ashamed because what he did was disrespectful to the Campaign worker who got killed in the car wreck.
Which raises the question: How does this idiot talk about people he doesn't admire?
Aren’t all PACs shady by their very nature? I don’t know. But they aren’t controlled by the candidates are they?
Why? Ben Carson politically is a fraud. His "manager" Armstrong Williams is in the tank for Louis Farrakhan and the despicable Black Lives Matter movement.
I'm not a Cruz fan by any stretch of the imagination (though I will vote for him if he's the nominee) but Cruz won Iowa fair and square.
Just a little aside----Ben Carson's wife was at an Iowa caucus when Cruz/s desperate trick to get votes was in play. She asked if she could speak on the subject....she told the caucus goers none of it was true....Carson was still running. Incidentally, Carson won that caucus.
=================================================
Greta V/S is not a Carson supporter.....but she went ballistic when she reported on the Cruz campaign/s intellectually facile response to his critics. ...claiming they used Carson/s own resignations words....when no such words exist.
=====================================
.....reports indicate that the schemers who did this were hired PRECISELY by Cruz b/c they did it before. That Cruz keeps them on his payroll, suggests the report is accurate.
Nice take. The evidence is all there for a criminal complaint. Cruz was caught w/ his pants down. Cruz had victory without triumph.
=========================================
Karl Rove, not a Trump fan by any means, explained how the Cruz cheating could have cost Donald the election.
The Cruz Campaign tweeted: Press says Carson is going to take a break...... so tell all the Carson people to campaign with Cruz.
But Rove explains that at 7:53 the Carson people send out a release saying, We/re here. We/re staying in the race. We/re going to New Hampshire and South Carolina.
And at 8:20 Cruz campaign chief Steve King tweets deceptively: It looks like Carson is getting out of the race...... knowing full well this was inaccurate.
Cruz characteristically lies.....said we sent it to our team, insinuating this had to do with sending it out to staff members.
W-r-o-n-g...says Rove. The Cruz team sent this to nearly 1,500 Cruz precinct captains.
Now why does that matter? The gap between Trump and Cruz is 6,239 votes. There are 1,500 precincts. Do the math. If that message cost Carson four votes per precinct to switch to Cruz, then Cruz beats Trump. If opportunistic Cruz hadn/t manipulated those four votes, he/d be the loser.
Well, he could always write an article about you.
EXCERPT The Iowa secretary of state was mostly concerned that Cruz’s campaign mailers appeared partially disguised to look like an official communication from the state government.
After looking at several mailers posted online, I was more curious about how the Cruz campaign came up with its scores. On all the mailers I saw, every voter listed had only one of three possible scores: fifty-five per cent, sixty-five per cent, or seventy-five per cent, which translate to F, D, and C grades, respectively. Iowans take voting pretty seriously.
Why was it that nobody had a higher grade.
Although Iowa voter-registration information is free and available to the public, voter history is not. That information is maintained by the Iowa secretary of state, who licenses it to campaigns, super PACs, polling firms, and any other entity that might want it.
So was the Cruz campaign accurately portraying the voter histories of Iowans? Or did it simply make up the numbers?
It seems to have made them up. Dave Peterson, a political scientist at Iowa State University who is well-acquainted with the research on “social pressure†turnout techniques, received a mailer last week. The Cruz campaign pegged his voting percentage at fifty-five per cent, which seems to be the most common score that the campaign gives out.
(All of the neighbors listed on Peterson’s mailer also received a score of fifty-five per cent.) Peterson, who is actually a Hillary Clinton supporter, moved to Iowa in 2009. He told me that he has voted in three out of the last three general elections and in two out of the last three primaries.
“There are other people listed on my mailer who live in my neighborhood that are all different ages, but everyone on this sheet has the same score of fifty-five per cent,†he said. “Some are significantly younger and would have not been eligible to vote in these elections, and others are older and have voted consistently, going back years. There is no way to get to us all having the same score.†(Peterson also spoke with Mother Jones.)
If the Cruz campaign based its score on local elections, Peterson said, the number also wouldn’t make sense, based on his participation in those elections as well. A source with access to the Iowa voter file told me that he checked several other names on Cruz mailers and that the voting histories of those individuals did not match the scores that the Cruz campaign assigned them in the mailer. ---SNIP--
REST AT: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ted-cruzs-iowa-mailers-are-more-fraudulent-than-everyone-thinks
But since Trump's campaign is "self funded" PACs are a distinction his fans think they can pounce on.
And no one pays attention to the fact that the initial news release came as the caucuses were just starting. The correction didn’t come until after they were underway. I’m Guessing in the chaos of the caucuses, there is not much time to check twitter.
Another thing not mentioned is that the initial misleading report was also BROADCAST on TV. I don’t think the correction was. I could be wrong.
It doesn’t matter to the Trumpbots. Remember, Trump could shoot someone in the street and they wouldn’t care. Trump was only half joking when he said that.
Why? Ben Carson politically is a fraud. His “manager” Armstrong Williams is in the tank for Louis Farrakhan and the despicable Black Lives Matter movement.——
EFF HIM.
Yes Cruz did win fair and square. I wanted CRUZ / WEST.
I wondered about that, never saw any with an A or B grade.
Sort of like curving the grades downwards.
Here’s a good minute by minute rundown of what happened:
http://constitution.com/ted-cruz-didnt-lie-entire-carsoncruz-fight-timeline/
More to the point——Iowa does not grade voting.
I dunno. I was thinking he maybe should redirect back to the issues, but it would be good to tell the truth straight to the people.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.