Thursday, November 05, 2015

BILL KRISTOL LOOKS AT BEN CARSON, SEES STARBURSTS

Bill Kristol has a new crush:



He's linking to a tweet that quotes a Ben Carson Facebook post that seems like a rough draft of the lengthy opening or closing statement Carson would give in the nearly question-free, statement-heavy debate of his dreams. Carson writes:
I do not have political experience, I have a life journey. A journey that not only made it possible for me to relate to so many different people, but also one where time and time again I was told I would fail, only to succeed. My candidacy is different, that I grant you....

I didn’t go to embassy cocktail parties or beg lobbyists for money. I spent night after night in a quiet, sterile room trying to save the life of a small child. That was my life’s service. This is my life’s experience. What I have is a lifetime of caring, integrity and honesty. I have experienced the American Dream. No where in the world, other than America, could a man whose ancestors were slaves, rise to become a leading brain surgeon and one day seek the Office of President.

The very fact that I am running is testament to the greatness of America. If all you want is political experience then I cannot be your candidate.
Cue the violins -- yes, this is moving. On the other hand, it contains absolutely no evidence that Carson is even minimally qualified to be president, if your principal criterion is actually knowing stuff that a president needs to know in order to do the job effectively. But that clearly didn't bother Kristol when he was cheerleading for Sarah Palin, so it's no surprise that it doesn't bother him now.

This isn't Kristol's first pro-Carson tweet.











I know, I know -- Kristol is wrong about everything, so this looks like the strongest evidence that Carson will fade.

But it's also evidence that Carson -- unlike Donald Trump -- would be acceptable to a significant segment of the GOP elite. Further evidence of this was Rupert Murdoch's notorious Carson tweet:



Obviously, the GOP Establishment would prefer Rubio, Bush, Kasich, or Christie, or, among the outsiders, Fiorina. But I think if Carson somehow emerges from this race as the nominee, a fair number of people in the Establishment will accept the outcome, concluding that it will be easy to nudge Carson in the direction of the Establishment's interests.

And Kristol, at least, seems eager to get behind another babe-in-the-woods who'd probably faceplant as embarrassingly as Palin in a general election campaign. (And as you can see from one of his tweets above, Kristol's pal Fred Barnes, another early Palin fan, is right there with him.) Does that increase the odds that we'll get to watch that happen to Carson?
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