“Stick A Fork In Ben Carson”: A Man Who Has Already Come To Grips With Failure
Two days before Christmas, Steven Ginsberg and Robert Costa of the Washington Post landed an interview with Ben Carson. It was conducted in Carson’s basement man-cave. The below ground-level setting is appropriate because the transcript reads like an obituary.
Dr. Carson laments virtually everything, from his annoying advisers who keep urging him to be more combative, to his inability to get mulligans for his many missteps, to the quality of the electorate, to the way the media twists his words, to the way his campaign has spent money. The overwhelming sense you get is of a man who has already come to grips with failure.
And that’s a failure in itself because the interview was supposed to demonstrate that he understands his campaign’s problems and is preparing to retool and make a big push before Iowa.
What struck me more than anything, though, is how there was no mention of any of the 13 ridiculous things that Ben Carson actually believes. The mistakes, insofar as they are detailed at all, are limited to foreign policy blunders, like his insistence that the Chinese have a large presence in Syria. But, arguably, Carson began to slip right around the time that it came out that he thinks the Egyptian pyramids were built to store grain. It became increasingly clear that Carson doesn’t just have some far-right views on abortion and war crimes and the Holocaust and censorship, he actually has a borderline crazy belief system.
One wonders in this day and age how much this actually hurts you in a Republican nominating contest. After all, the guy in first place is the country’s most famous Birther. There are certainly areas where being an over-the-top bomb thrower helps you win support from the GOP base. Arguably, this was the way Carson won his initial popularity and support on the right. I assume this is what his advisers believe, too, and it’s why they’ve urged him to throw bombs not just at the president and his health care plan and reproductive rights, but at his Republican opponents.
Maybe his lack of foreign policy experience really is the best explanation for his precipitous fall in the polls. The only problem with that explanation is that Donald Trump should have suffered right along with Carson in the aftermath of the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. Maybe Trump’s bluster and bravado cover his lack of expertise better than Carson’s mellower act.
Whatever the explanation, Carson seems like a man who is already beaten before the first vote is cast. And he knows that he’s injured his reputation in the bargain.
Carson: A weak person isn’t selected by CNN and Time magazine as one of the 20 foremost physicians and surgeons in America. That was before they discovered that I’m conservative. A weak person doesn’t have all of these honorary degrees. Most people of accomplishment have one, maybe two or three honorary degrees at most. It’s the highest award that a university gives out. I have 67. That’s probably not indicative of a weak person who doesn’t get things done.
Costa: Has this campaign helped or hurt that reputation, that legacy?
Carson: Without question, it will hurt it. But it’s not about me. I’m willing to sacrifice that legacy and that reputation if we can get our country turned around. One person is not a big deal as far as I’m concerned.
If Carson thought there were the slightest chance that he’d win the nomination, he’d certainly not answer that question by saying that “without question” the campaign will end up hurting his reputation.
You can stick a fork in him. His presidential ambitions are done.
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, December 28, 2015
“The Great Fracturing Of The Republican Party”: Appears To Believe In Anything, Which Is The Same As Believing In Nothing
It is no longer possible to think of “the Republican Party” as a coherent political force. It is nothing of the sort — and the Donald Trump insurgency should be seen as a symptom, not the cause, of the party’s disintegration.
I realize this may seem an odd assessment of a party that controls both houses of Congress, 32 governorships and two-thirds of state legislative chambers. The desire to win and hold power is one thing the party’s hopelessly disparate factions agree on; staunch and sometimes blind opposition to President Obama and the Democrats is another. After those, it’s hard to think of much else.
It makes no sense anymore to speak of “the GOP” without specifying which one. The party that celebrates immigration as central to the American experiment or the one that wants to round up 11 million people living here without papers and kick them out? The party that believes in U.S. military intervention and seeding the world with democratic values or the one that believes strife-torn nations should have to depose their own dictators and resolve their own civil wars? The party that represents the economic interests of business owners or the one that voices the anxieties of workers?
All of these conflicts were evident Tuesday night at the presidential candidates’ debate in Las Vegas. It was compelling theater — Trump mugging and shrugging for the cameras, Jeb Bush gamely steeling himself to go on the attack, Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) waging a one-on-one battle, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vowing to shoot down Russian jets over Syria, Ben Carson turning “boots on the ground” into a mantra without actually saying what he thinks about deploying them.
A Republican optimist might praise the candidates for airing “serious” and “important” policy debates. A realist would say this is a party that appears to believe in anything, which is the same as believing in nothing.
One of the more telling exchanges came when Trump was asked whether the United States was safer with dictators running the troubled nations of the Middle East. Trump replied, “In my opinion, we’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly, if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our airports and all of the other problems we’ve had, we would have been a lot better off, I can tell you that right now.”
Carly Fiorina was aghast. “That is exactly what President Obama said,” she declared. “I’m amazed to hear that from a Republican presidential candidate.”
Indeed, there once was broad consensus within the party about the advisability and legitimacy of forcing “regime change” in pursuit of U.S. interests. But toppling even such a monster as Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is opposed by Trump, Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) — who combined have the support of 51 percent of Republican voters, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. So apparently there isn’t a “Republican view” about foreign intervention anymore.
Nor is the party able to agree on immigration policy. Even if you somehow manage to look past Trump’s outrageous call for mass deportation, there is no consensus for the course of action favored by what’s left of the party establishment, which would be to give undocumented migrants some kind of legal status. The only point of concord is the allegation that Obama has failed to “secure the border,” which is actually far more secure than it was under George W. Bush.
Once upon a time, the Republican Party’s position on a given issue usually dovetailed nicely with the views of business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But the chamber supports giving the undocumented a path to legal status. It also waxes rhapsodic about the benefits of free trade for U.S. firms and shareholders. Now, since Trump opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact (as does Mike Huckabee), other candidates have had to mumble about waiting to see the details before deciding pro or con.
The GOP electorate has changed; it’s whiter, older, less educated and more blue -collar than it used to be. Many of today’s Republicans don’t see globalization as an investment opportunity; they see it as a malevolent force that has dimmed their prospects. They don’t see the shrinking of the white majority as natural demographic evolution; they see it as a threat.
One of our two major political parties is factionalized and out of control. That should worry us all.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 17, 2015
“A Foreign-Policy Party No More”: On Foreign Policy, The GOP’s Candidates For President Are Either Ignorant Or Insane
Fairly early on in this week’s Republican presidential debate, Ted Cruz was reminded about his recent quote in which he vowed to “carpet bomb ISIS into oblivion,” testing whether “sand can glow in the dark.” Asked whether he’s prepared to decimate a populated city like Raqqa, informally known as the ISIS capital in Syria, the Texas senator hedged.
“You would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops,” Cruz said, adding, “[T]he object isn’t to level a city. The object is to kill the ISIS terrorists.”
This plainly didn’t make any sense. It’s as if Cruz referenced carpet bombing – indiscriminate bombing of large areas, without regard for collateral damage – without having any idea what it means. To hear the Texas Republican tell it, there’s such a thing as precision, “directed” carpet bombing, which is a contradiction in terms.
The gibberish, however, was par for the course. Writing in the Washington Post, Dan Drezner, a center-right scholar, said yesterday, “When it comes to foreign policy, the GOP’s candidates for president in 2016 are either ignorant or insane.”
The overwhelming bulk of what the GOP candidates had to say last night was pure, unadulterated horses***. […]
When I came of political age, the Republican Party had a surfeit of smart, tough-minded foreign policy folk: Brent Scowcroft, Robert Gates, James Baker, Bob Zoellick, Richard Haass, and Lawrence Eagleburger. I pity these people having to listen to what was said on the GOP main stage last night.
Keep in mind, this isn’t so much about subjective questions. Knowing what we know now, was the invasion of Iraq in 2003 a good idea or a bad idea? Marco Rubio says it was a good idea; most people who’ve been conscious for the last 12 years say the opposite; and it can be a topic of spirited conversation.
When a center-right observer like Drezner talks about Republican presidential candidates being “either ignorant or insane,” he’s not referring to debatable judgment calls. He’s referring to an entire field of GOP candidates who at times seemed lost as to what foreign policies actually are.
Slate’s Fred Kaplan noted the debate was “devoted to national security and terrorism, about which most of the nine major candidates proved they knew nothing, a fact that some tried to conceal by making stuff up.”
How did the party that used to dominate on foreign policy fall to such cringe-worthy depths?
Part of the problem is likely the result of the demise of the Republican Party’s elder statesmen. In the not-too-distant past, the GOP was guided on foreign policy by responsible, learned hands – experienced officials like Dick Lugar, John Warner, and Brent Scowcroft – who approached international affairs with degree of maturity. Those Republicans now tend to agree with President Obama.
Which leads to another potential explanation: the more Obama represents some kind of “sensible center” on matters of foreign policy, the more his radicalized Republican critics feel the need to move even further to the right.
I also wouldn’t discount the role of post-policy thinking of the broader debate: the national GOP candidates are speaking to (and for) a party that has no patience for substantive details, historical lessons, nuance, or diplomacy. Heck, we’re talking about a party that has convinced itself that the key to defeating terrorists is literally using the phrase “radical Islam,” as if the words have magical national-security implications. That’s ridiculous, of course, but it’s emblematic of a party that approaches foreign policy itself with all the maturity of a Saturday-morning cartoon.
Finally, some context is probably in order. At the end of the Bush/Cheney era, the GOP’s entire approach to international affairs was discredited and in tatters. It needed to be rebuilt, reconsidered, and molded anew into something coherent. That never happened – the intra-party debate never really occurred, except to the extent that Republicans agreed that Obama is always wrong, even when he’s right, and those who agree with him must always be rejected, even when they’re Republicans in good standing.
Taken together, there’s something genuinely pathetic about the Republican Party’s once-great credibility on these issues. As Rachel put it on the show last night, “We really need two parties who are good at this issue in order to have good policy on this issue. We need good debate because this stuff is hard and our best decisions will come out of good, robust debate. Can the Republican Party hold up its end of the debate?”
It’s hard to be optimistic, isn’t it?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 17, 2015
“None Of Them Have Any Idea Of What’s Going On”: The GOP’s Foreign-Policy Dunces Must Think We’re Stupid
In a rare moment of lucidity, Ben Carson recently confessed that “there’s nobody running [for president] who has a great deal of international experience, except for Hillary Clinton.” This was, he stressed, meant as a knock against the former Secretary of State, whose tenure as America’s top diplomat included cascading foreign policy disasters in the Middle East, a disastrous attempt at rapprochement with Russia, and the bloody chaos of post-Gaddafi Libya.
But like many of his fellow Republican presidential candidates, Carson believes the catastrophic failures of an experienced politician require the fresh thinking of an inexperienced civilian with a “logical” foreign policy. And besides, as a doctor he has “the most experience making life or death decisions.”
It’s not just a deficit of foreign policy experience amongst Republicans that should worry voters, but the stunning deficit of foreign policy knowledge. Just two days before his comments about Clinton, Carson stood before the Republican Jewish Coalition fumbling with a prepared script, correctly identifying the confessional allegiance of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas without having been briefed on how to pronounce Hamas.
One would like to take comfort that Carson’s plummeting popularity is attributable to the comic incoherence of his foreign policy platform. But the continued rise of Donald Trump, whose ideas are dumber (but louder) than Carson’s, neatly disproves this theory.
Since the latest ISIS-affiliated and inspired mass murders in Paris and San Bernardino, Trump has busied himself with solving the problem of violent Islamism. Battling against the scourge of facts, he angrily recalled the 2001 northern New Jersey intifada, in which “thousands and thousands” of Muslims cheered the attacks of 9/11 from across the Hudson River. He demonstrated his conservative bona fides when agreeing that the federal government might maintain a database of “all Muslims” in America. When his supporters cheered that idea, Trump turned the crassness up a few notches and suggested that the United States might block entry of every Muslim on Earth.
And what does one do with all of those Syrian war refugees? Trump, the right-wing Walter Ulbricht, believes in the power of walls to contain most every problem facing America, from trade to immigration to radical Islam. His solution is risible but simple: build a “big, beautiful safe zone” within Syria “so people can live and they’ll be happier.” (Incidentally, his anti-immigration wall in the United States would be “tall” but, as a sop to aesthetes on the southern border, he promises to “make it very good looking.”)
And that’s just on the home front.
According to Trump, the nettlesome problem of the genocidal, imperialist “Islamic State” isn’t so nettlesome after all. In a recent radio ad, he offered a glimpse of his new counterterrorism strategy: President Trump would “quickly and decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS.” (This is a slight modification of his previously enumerated plan to “bomb the shit out of ISIS”). Not to be outdone, Sen. Ted Cruz has consistently reimagined Raqqa as a desert Dresden, promising to “carpet-bomb [the Islamic State] into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out.”
Cruz later enlarged on his anti-ISIS policies, revealing on Twitter that “if I’m elected president, I will direct the Department of Defense to destroy ISIS.”
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
But can we achieve victory through airpower alone? Having previously knocked Marco Rubio as a “neocon” whose hobbies include “military adventurism,” Cruz dismissed the idea of using ground troops in Syria. But with polls suggesting that Americans are spoiling for a fight with Islamism, the Texas senator now says that he would consider “using whatever ground troops are necessary” to defeat ISIS.
Donald Trump too scorns Republicans who supported the Iraq War. But our post-Paris world demands a little more ideological sinew, so he too has vacillated on American ground troops engaging in the fight against ISIS “if need be.” Marco Rubio has been consistent on this point, but adds that we should videotape our raids on “Sunni leadership nodes” and post to YouTube footage of “ISIS leaders cry[ing] like babies when they’re captured.”
All of this would require significant expenditure, and with the exception of Rand Paul, every conservative on stage tonight desires more government spending on the military. While acknowledging that America’s military is the world’s strongest, Trump believes that fattening the Pentagon’s already bloated budget would provoke the ISIS leadership into retreat. He’ll make “the military so strong no one—and I mean no one—will mess with us.” (Yesterday, Jeb Bush tweeted that “the day that I’m elected president is the day we begin rebuilding the Armed Forces of America,” which suggests that we won’t be rebuilding the armed forces anytime soon.)
All of these policies are fantastically meaningless, an inconvenience that appears to be of little concern to primary voters. But almost every Republican candidate believes in the vapidity of those voters, swapping out coherent strategy for bellicose rhetoric.
One would think that a renewed focus amongst voters on terrorism would be an opportunity for Republicans, who remain the more trusted party on national security. After all, Hillary Clinton did little to stanch the bleeding in Syria and Bernie Sanders’s most comprehensive foreign policy experience is establishing a sister city program with Nicaragua’s Marxist dictatorship in Vermont. Instead, the Republican brand is now associated with oafish suggestions that the United States Air Force flatten Syria and the Department of Homeland Security create a non-Muslim fortress state.
The hated Republican establishment, we are told, is afraid of renegade ideas. Well, no. They’re afraid of bad ideas. They are afraid of candidates who promise to learn as they lead. Indeed, Trump criticized Carson as “incapable of learning foreign policy,” adding that when the professional conspiracy theorists in his campaign tell him what to think “within about two seconds I understand it.” Because to the current Republican frontrunner, the most powerful man on Earth needn’t have knowledge of foreign policy, but the desire and aptitude for on-the-job training.
And Rasputin-like instincts.
“I predicted Osama bin Laden,” Trump said in November. “In my book, I predicted terrorism. Because I can feel it, like I feel a good location, O.K.?”
O.K. I feel safer now. So when do we commence carpet bombing?
By: Michael Moynihan, The Daily Beast, December 15, 2015
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