Carson Campaign Finding Stride After Shakeup

Ben Carson speaks to a full house at Central College in Pella, Iowa

Pella, Iowa – The winter mist made for some slick travel, but over 350 supporters found their way in to see a Republican candidate for president that had slid in the polls, after once holding the top spot.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is doing more than shaking off the cold in Iowa, he’s shaking off a campaign staff exodus, and retooling his efforts for the 3 weeks leading up to the February 1 Iowa Caucus.

His stop in Pella indicated that the candidate has many interested listeners yet in the highly conservative town of Pella, Iowa. The Graham Conference Center at Central College was standing room only as Carson spoke for nearly an hour.

Carson, Expressed concern that “so many adults you see today really don’t know very much. Have you noticed that? So many people. Watch Jesse Waters World sometime. And you know how he [Jesse] goes and asks people really basic questions about America and about our history and about our system. They don’t have a clue what he’s talking about, and these people vote. You know, that’s the sad thing.”

“Our founders, particularly Jefferson and Franklin, said that our system and our freedoms are dependent on a well informed and educated populace,” added Carson. “They said if we ever had anything other than that, the nature of the country would rapidly change. Basically what they were saying is that well informed people are hard to manipulate. But people that don’t have a depth of knowledge can easily be swayed. All you need is a slick politician and a complacent media… and away they [people without a depth of knowledge] go in any direction you want to take them.”

“This is what we must fight in this country,” said Carson.

Carson took aim at President Obama during his Pella speech, saying, “If I were in charge of this nation, and I was attempting to destroy it, let me tell you what I would do. I would drive wedges between everybody. I would make everybody feel like they were enemies. I would make you think that if there’s somebody who disagrees with you they are your enemy, and you should do everything you can to make life difficult for them. I would destabilize the nation financially. I would drive the debt to the sky. I would invite people in here from other countries. I would say we’re going to give you all kinds of benefits. I would be trying to get the people in this country on every kind of benefit and entitlement, [such as] food stamps. I would be giving people free telephones and telling people that you can go to college for free. You should be able to do that. You would just get people thinking that everybody owes them everything. And then I would destroy the military. I would have the smallest Navy since 1917. I would have the smallest Air Force since 1940. I would have sequestration to cut out the heart of personnel in our military. I would have everybody demoralized. I would tell the veterans that they are the most wonderful people, but I would do nothing to improve their lives so that 22 veterans per day were committing suicide. I would do nothing to fix the infrastructure of our country, in particularly the electric grid, leaving us extremely vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses from the sun or a nuclear explosion. I would get out of the space program, because so many of our innovations came from the space program that kept us far ahead in terms of military science and the future; he who controls space will control the earth.”

“Those are the things that I would do if I were in charge and I was trying to destroy this country. Any resemblance to what’s going on, I am sure is coincidental,” said Carson.

Carson’s Achilles Heel has been on foreign policy. On Wednesday night, Carson fielded a question about how he would manage uprisings and threats to the United States from nations like North Korea, as well as terrorist threats.

“Kim Jong Un is unstable,” said Carson. “And that’s putting it very mildly.”

“There are going to be more people like that who are going to have these weapons”, saying that eventually weapons of mass destruction will end up in the hands of jihadists.

“This is a big problem and, with North Korea specifically, what I would do is call on China who does seem to have some influence with them, although they [China] are starting to lose it.”

“But also, they [North Korea] need to be afraid of us,” says Carson. Carson, who then referenced a cyber attack on Sony, asked, “What did we do? Nothing.”

“I would hit them so hard, they’d still be recovering from it. They would never think of messing with us. I would also let Kim Jong Un know that if they ever launch a missile at us, it will be the very last thing they will do. They will never do anything else because we will wipe them out. I would also make sure the rest of the world understood that.”

The Iowa Caucuses take place on Febraury 1st, 2016. You can find out more about Carson at his website – https://www.bencarson.com/