It’s unlikely Carson will again shrink into the background Tuesday when the eight leading GOP candidates meet in Milwaukee, Wis. Now viewed as a front-runner for the Republican nomination, which has been central to his connection with voters.
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At Liberty University, many student cited Carson’s overt faith as a reason behind the intense scrutiny he’s now receiving as a frontrunner. He inveighed against banking regulations while indicating he would head off another financial crisis with new, though unspecified, regulation.
Liberty University is a frequent stop for Republican presidential hopefuls. Sen. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of SC is the only candidate to have raised more here.
But the debate added little to those outlines. I didn’t think I was very smart, and I remember once we were having an argument in the schoolyard about who was the dumbest kid in the class. It wasn’t a big argument, because they all agreed it was me”, said Carson, “but then someone had to extend the argument to who was the dumbest in the world, and I said, ‘Wait a minute. “If he thought it was fair I think is must be pretty fair”. He did not say who would challenge ISIS for that control or how.
Carson said God gave her mother the wisdom to require him and his brother to read books and submit written book reports to her, even though she couldn’t read them.
“I have always said that I expect to be vetted, but being vetted and what is going on with me – ‘You said this 30 years ago, you said this 20 years ago, this didn’t exist, ‘ I have not seen that with anyone else”, the retired neurosurgeon said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”. “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation”. Now there are other people who learn a great deal from boring lectures, and that’s how they learn.
In the edited version, they water it down to mumbling that Carson “conceded that he never applied nor was granted admission to West Point…” Clinton’s use of a personal email account and server while secretary of state was uncovered by the mainstream media Carson criticizes for looking at his story. In past presidential elections years, Kentucky Democrats and Republicans chose candidates during the May primary. But Trump would not say who that person is, saying only that the person would be a man.
Unlike Trump, a few of Carson’s S.C. supporters find his refusal to throw mud at opponents refreshing.
“He was on the lean side” in providing details, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and Urban Institute.
Noting that the Founding Fathers considered a well-informed populace a “vital requisite” for freedom, Carson told the audience, “If people are not well-informed, all it takes is unscrupulous politicians and news media – and off the people go in a completely wrong direction”.
Carson aides promise that he will unveil a detailed tax-and-budget plan in the coming weeks. He repeated Wednesday that he would do away with the most popular personal income tax deductions, those for mortgage interest and charitable contributions.
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Carson didn’t address the either-or question, but he said his “tithing” argument is based on proportionality. I don’t believe that Carson has ever claimed or implied anything more than that.
