Ben Carson “doubled down on his stance that he will leave the GOP if party elite are planning to mount a floor fight at the nominating convention,” The Hill reports.
Said Carson: “Well, one of the reasons that I got into this is because I heard the frustration in the people who are so tired of back-room deals, of subterfuge, of dishonesty. And, you know, if that is the case, then you know I’m out of here.”
Ben Carson “thinks everyone visiting the United States should register and be monitored while in the country,” Reuters reports.
Said a spokesman: “Everyone visiting our country should register and be monitored during their stay as is done in many countries. We do not and would not advocate being selective on one’s religion.”
“Ted Cruz returns to Iowa this weekend aiming to capitalize on Ben Carson’s precipitous decline and to establish himself as the anti-Washington candidate most qualified to be commander-in-chief,” Politico reports.
“Both Cruz and Carson will court voters at the last big cattle-call scheduled in Iowa before the Feb. 1 caucuses – an event hosted by the conservative group FreedomWorks. And while the event was meant to focus on economics, the emergence of security and foreign policy is climbing to the top of the agenda, giving Cruz the edge his supporters think he needs to elbow Carson out.”
“After struggling for weeks to articulate his views on foreign policy, presidential candidate Ben Carson didn’t take any chances when addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The retired neurosurgeon read his 30-minute speech from notes, looking down at his lectern and not at the audience. He repeatedly botched the pronunciation of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, making it sound instead like the chickpea dish hummus — all while impugning President Obama’s understanding of the Middle East… He kept speaking through the few moments of applause and spoke – as many reporters present noted on Twitter – as if he were a nervous adolescent delivering a middle-school book report.”
Rick Klein: “If there’s a Paris effect in the GOP race, it looks like Ben Carson is the one feeling it – and not Donald Trump. The new Quinnipiac poll out Wednesday morning shows Carson down 7 points over the past month, with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz now in a virtual tie with him for second place. His numbers have suffered across the board, but this may be the most telling: Republicans saw him as having the right experience to be president, 64-30, a month ago; now that’s 42-46 – turned around and underwater.”
“It’s no collapse, but it’s a major warning sign for a candidate with weak credentials on foreign policy and national security, notwithstanding a trip to a Syrian refugee camp right after Thanksgiving. This is another factor that makes the Ted Cruz-Marco Rubio rivalry fascinating and important. If Carson supporters are up for grabs, it’s those two senators who seem, for now, best positioned to take advantage.”
“Ben Carson, whose widespread support among evangelical voters has shown some signs of slipping, will hold a news conference in South Carolina on Wednesday that his campaign has called an ‘Evangelical Rollout,'” the New York Times reports.
“I did not detect any great desire for them to come to the United States.”
— Ben Carson, quoted by the Associated Press, after visiting with Syrian refugees in Jordan.
Republican strategist Karl Rove helped set up a meeting between top fundraisers for Ben Carson and casino mogul Steve Wynn, a sometimes business competitor of Donald Trump, Bloomberg reports.
Los Angeles Times: “Before he entered the race, … Carson signed on to … American Legacy PAC, an organization with ties to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. With Carson as the face of its Save Our Healthcare campaign, American Legacy raised close to $6 million in 2014 – and spent nearly all of it paying the consultants and firms that raised the money. Just 2% was donated to Republican candidates and committees.”
“Ben Carson, who is facing increasing scrutiny over his grasp of foreign policy, is traveling to Jordan on Friday to visit Syrian refugees, in order to gain an understanding of the pressing issue and to polish his candidacy,” the New York Times reports.
Said Carson: “I find when you have firsthand knowledge of things as opposed to secondhand, it makes a much stronger impression.”
Wonk Wire: Explaining the Syrian refugee vetting process
“Ben Carson continued to walk back his assertion on Monday night that, like Donald Trump, he also saw video footage of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11, blaming the media in the process for having ‘an agenda,'” Politico reports.
Said Carson: “They asked me: Did I see the film? I did see the film. I don’t know where they were, but I did see a film of Muslims celebrating. And I was making the point that it was inappropriate.”
Ben Carson said the United States should have a database on every immigrant who enters the country, “addressing comments from Donald Trump that he would not rule out creating a registry of Muslims to track for terrorist activity,” Politico reports.
At the same time, he called Trump’s call for tracking and targeting Muslims specifically as something that would be “setting a pretty dangerous precedent.”
“If there’s a rabid dog running around your neighborhood you’re probably not gonna assume something good about that dog, and you’re probably gonna put your children out of the way… At the same time, I love dogs, and I’m gonna call the humane society. Hopefully they can come and take this dog away and create a safe environment once again.”
— Ben Carson, quoted by CBS News, on the Syrian refugees.
Ben Carson’s presidential campaign “took to social media to share a map of the United States in which five New England states were placed in the wrong location. The campaign deleted the Twitter and Facebook posts Wednesday morning after media outlets and social media users pointed out the error,” the Washington Post reports.
“Ben Carson’s remarks on foreign policy have repeatedly raised questions about his grasp of the subject, but never more seriously than in the past week, when he wrongly asserted that China had intervened militarily in Syria and then failed, on national television, to name the countries he would call on to form a coalition to fight the Islamic State,” the New York Times reports.
“Faced with increasing scrutiny about whether Mr. Carson — who leads in some Republican presidential polls — was capable of leading American foreign policy, two of his top advisers said… that he had struggled to master the intricacies of the Middle East and national security and that intense tutoring was having little effect.”
Said one: “Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East.”
Jonathan Chait: “The candidate’s advisers are saying on the record he doesn’t know anything, has trouble learning anything, and cannot seem to recall even what little information he has managed to assimilate. I don’t see how a Carson presidency could go wrong.”
“Texas businessman Terry Giles, Ben Carson’s former campaign chairman and close friend of more than 20 years, has been ‘shut out’ from his presidential campaign just as the retired former neurosurgeon has ascended to the level of Republican front-runner,” Bloomberg reports.
“Giles, who was one of the dominant forces behind Carson’s exploratory committee back in early 2015, is no longer formally connected to the campaign nor is he acting as an adviser.”
Saturday Night Live had fun with Ben Carson’s life story.
“Two escalating rivalries at the heart of the Republican presidential contest took a nasty turn this week, crystallizing divisions among the top four candidates in what has so far been a murky race,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Donald Trump “raised the stakes in his contest with retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson by uncorking a battery of personal insults at the one Republican who continues to challenge him for the top spot in most national polls. The escalation of their feud coincides with an acrimonious back-and-forth between Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio over the latter’s support for a Senate-passed immigration overhaul that would have established a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally.”
Washington Post: “Trump — after weeks of bristling at rising challengers — has again seized center stage in the chaotic Republican nomination race, unleashing a torrent of personal and sometimes profane attacks that forced his rivals to respond and underscored his continued dominance.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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