Ben Carson on Friday announced he is “leaving the campaign trail” after a string of disappointing finishes in the GOP presidential primary contests and urged his former Republican rivals for more civility.
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His campaign failed to gain traction after briefly leading in national polling in November. He said Christians need to get registered to vote. In a statement on Wednesday, he announced he was skipping Thursday night’s Fox News debate and said he saw no “political path forward” after doing poorly on Super Tuesday.
Carson repeated the message in a video on the group’s website, saying it’s his goal to encourage all Christians in “exercising our civic duty and voting”.
“I have always kind of thought that people at some point would just say, you know, enough of this foolishness, we’re going to look at these policies and we’re going to see what works”, Carson said in a question-and-answer session after his speech.
“I will continue to be heavily involved in trying to save our nation”. According to NBC News, Carson made this announcement while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which took place near Washington, D.C.
He did not attend the Republican debate in MI on Thursday.
In the end, Carson acknowledged that person, in the eyes of most Republican primary voters, wasn’t him.
He has not said which of the remaining four candidates he plans to endorse in the race for the Republican nomination. “We can not afford to give the Democrats all this ammunition”. That’s the seat Marco Rubio is vacating to run for president.
“It’s not something I want to do”, Carson said.
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Later, when Ted Cruz’s campaign spread rumors that Carson was getting out of the race during the Iowa caucuses, a cautious Carson shied from blaming the Texas senator – only eventually and obliquely chastising Cruz when furious aides showed him proof of Cruz’s grassroots supporters’ efforts to woo his supporters at the last minute. “Politics and running for political office is never something that I was particularly interested in doing”.
