Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Carson

I was worried that Ben Carson could seem just plausible enough - because of his calm demeanor and his personal biography - to win the nomination and then sneak by Clinton in the general.  All of this despite some genuinely lunatic ideas.

I am more hopeful that this is not the case.

He's getting ripped on his gun nonsense.

And now he is showing a level of incompetence on a pretty straightforward economic issue that I wouldn't accept from kids finishing a high school government course.  Even as Ryssdal tries to correct him and remind him what he's talking about, he has no freaking clue.

The lunatic ideas he has expressed about guns are, frankly, par for the course among GOP candidates.  So even though he has a political tin ear, it's unlikely to hurt him with the GOP rank and file.

But if you're a Wall Street mogul, you have to get a little sweaty about the idea of this guy as your standard bearer.

UPDATE: Jon Chait:
You think Carson is bluffing? He is not bluffing. This is a man who thinks“highfalutin scientists” concocted the theories of evolution and the origins of the universe for Satanic reasons. A reminder: Carson is the second-most-popular choice among Republicans to be their party’s nominee for president of the United States, behind the comparatively sober and well-informed Donald Trump.

No comments: