BEN CARSON COULD WIN THE IOWA CAUCUSES
(updated)

The newest Des Moines Register poll of Iowa Republicans says Mitt Romney is their first choice for 2016. But note who's #2:



I keep telling you about this guy -- as I wrote in August,

A couple of weeks ago, he won the presidential straw poll of the Western Conservative Summit; before that, he nearly won the Republican Leadership Conference straw poll, losing to Ted Cruz, 30 to 29%.... I've already seen a couple of "Ben Carson for President" bumper stickers, including one in a rural, 99.99%-white part of upstate New York. He's had two #1 New York Times bestsellers, and the Draft Ben Carson for President Committee has been surprisingly well funded.

... I'll be beside myself with glee if he somehow makes it onto the GOP ticket, because he's incredibly divisive -- a young-earth creationist who compares Obamacare to slavery and gay marriage to bestiality, a guy whose says liberals are

the most racist people there are. Because you know, they put you in a little category, a little box, "you have to think this way, how could you dare come off the plantation?"

All of which means he could probably finish in the top tier in the Iowa caucuses.

He's a pure creation of the right-wing media, which wants to put an African-American face on the wingnut message, something Carson is extremely eager to do. He's a conservative Christian, which means that he could win Iowa the way Santorum won it two years ago and Huckabee won it four years before that. At that point, he's going to help set the terms of a lot of intraparty debates for the GOP.

And in that position, he's going to say things a lot of things like what he said in August to Fox's Neil Cavuto about an Ebola terrorism scenario he thinks is plausible:

CARSON: So if there were a container of contaminated urine, and somehow it managed to find its way to someplace a lot of damage could be done.

CAVUTO: Now, that would be a stretch for the series of events to make that contagious, or would it?

CARSON: Well, again I say you always have to guard for the worst case scenario. So, you know, someone comes up to a lab worker. He knows he's got the urine. "How would you like to have a million dollars?" A little transaction there. I mean, somebody's going to say "That's crazy. That can never happen." Such things have been known to happen. We have to guard against worst case scenarios.

Yup, it's going to be an interesting Republican primary season.

****

UPDATE, WEDNESDAY: Yikes:

.@MittRomney to @bpolitics Wednesday in Boston, "I don't know Ben Carson. I've read some of his speeches and he seems like a good guy."

— Mark Halperin (@MarkHalperin) October 15, 2014