If Ben Carson is on a learning curve, Tuesday’s GOP debate is test day
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Version 0 of 1. DES MOINES — Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is far from in “panic mode” over his sharp decline in national polls, he told reporters this week on the campaign trail — even as he and his campaign have taken aggressive steps to deflate the scrutiny over his grasp of foreign policy issues. “I will continue what I have been doing, and that is speaking the truth and talking about the issues as I see them,” Carson said at a news conference Friday during a swing through Moravia, Iowa. “I’m not a politician, so I don’t go into panic mode because my numbers have dropped.” Nonetheless, over the past several weeks at town-hall-style appearances and rallies in Georgia, South Carolina, Michigan and Iowa, Carson has sought to reassure supporters that he is prepared for the presidency. His stump speech now makes pointed references to the Islamic State’s stronghold in Raqqa, Syria; to Kurdish forces fighting in Sinjar, Iraq; and also to resistance failures in Mosul, Iraq. He also talks regularly about the Syrian refugee crisis, grasping for credibility on the issue by pointing to his short “fact-finding” trip to two camps in Jordan last month. Voters have given a mixed reaction to Carson’s effort to reemerge as a front-runner in the Republican nominating contest. The retired neurosurgeon has fallen in recent national polling from second place to fourth place in the crowded Republican field, still behind businessman Donald Trump and now also trailing Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), candidates whose perceived strengths on national security have become increasingly important since the shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. Cruz, in particular, has surged to the front of the pack in early-voting Iowa, becoming the favorite among evangelical Christian voters. Whether he will be able to reverse the sharp decline could rest heavily on his two hours onstage Tuesday in Las Vegas as CNN hosts the fifth and final GOP debate of the year. An analysis of polling trends shows that Carson has significantly benefited from past debates, endearing himself to voters even as his soft-spoken demeanor has left many critics convinced that he had not achieved any breakout moments. “Another good debate might put him back in the mix of things,” Danny Drake, 53, said Friday at a campaign event in Moravia. “He’s a very smart man, and he has a lot of common sense. And any area he doesn’t have experience in he would be able to pick it up quickly.” Drake said he was leaning toward supporting Trump or Rubio but had not ruled out Carson. More than anything, Drake said, he is looking for a candidate who avoids “all that political-correctness bulls---.” With much of the spotlight fixed on Trump’s controversial rhetoric and also on the brewing battle between him and Cruz, it will be difficult for Carson to garner much attention on the stage. Carson has tested a revised message on the trail in recent weeks, readily acknowledging that he lacks foreign policy experience but stressing that what he lacks in knowledge he makes up for in judgment. At a town hall event Wednesday in Ypsilanti, Mich., he compared criticism he has faced to comments made about Ronald Reagan before he became president. “I could read you a whole bunch of quotes about Ronald Reagan that said, ‘He knows nothing about foreign policy. He will be an embarrassment to us.’ And he turned out to be one of the best there is,” Carson told the audience, which cheered. “It’s because they never seem to learn that foreign policy, like everything else, has a lot more to do with common sense and wisdom than it does with being a professional politician.” That argument may seem thin to political strategists. But the strong anti-Washington sentiment throughout the country has elevated outsider candidates including Carson — and many of them view his lack of political experience as a strength. “I don’t put much weight into [Carson’s mistakes]. I also read in these same papers and outlets that Hillary Clinton has all this experience — and she hasn’t done anything,” said Ken McCormick, 44, a Republican voter in Iowa. If Carson has been on a “learning curve,” as he said last month, then Tuesday will be an important, high-profile opportunity to show voters just how much he has been able to absorb from what his campaign has described as daily briefings with foreign policy experts. And he could also benefit from baggage carried by Trump and Cruz, whose friendly relationship seems increasingly poised to collapse. “If you look at the way Trump has lived his life, he doesn’t share our values,” said McCormick, in direct reference to Trump’s bankruptcies in the 1990s and his multiple divorces. “Cruz has not worked well with those in the Senate. There is real animosity because of how he’s tried to take the spotlight,” said Sharon Deaver, who regularly attends Carson’s Iowa events and has volunteered for the campaign, when asked how Carson and Cruz compare. Carson has accused the press of blowing his missteps out of proportion. He has taken to joking about his frequent verbal somersaults, such as when he repeatedly struggled to pronounce the name of the Palestinian extremist organization Hamas during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition two weeks ago. Instead, it sounded as if he was describing hummus, the chickpea dip. “Whatever I say, the media will say I said it wrong. It’s a city out there!” he joked after stumbling on pronouncing “Mosul” at an event in Atlanta. The harshest criticism Carson has faced came last month from within the campaign’s ranks: “Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” Duane Clarridge, a former CIA agent and Carson adviser, told the New York Times. “I’m very sensitive to, you know, the narrative that Carson doesn’t know anything about foreign policy,” Carson admitted Tuesday to an audience of more than 1,000 supporters in Atlanta. That same evening, he announced a 16-person foreign policy team advising him on national security issues. |