The surgical precision of Ben Carson by Herman Cain

Cuts like a scalpel.

 Ben Carson surprised me a little during Thursday night’s debate – not that I didn’t think he would do well. I had just interviewed him on The Herman Cain Show a few days earlier and I knew he was prepared and ready for whatever questions would be thrown at him.

But I was nevertheless impressed by the surgical precisions of some of his answers. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, since after all he is a brain surgeon. But for a guy who doesn’t have much experience on a stage this big, he really knew how to get down to it.

He would take on Hillary Clinton, he said, by coming against the Alinsky model that assumes people are stupid, and counts on stupid people to serve as the useful idiots that Democrats need in order to govern. Dr. Carson said his approach would not be to try to fool people but to educate them, which demonstrates that he understands something we say on this show all the time: The American people are smart enough to make the right decisions if they have all the facts. As it stands right now, the media don’t give them all the facts so leaders who are interested in the truth are going to have to do it.

There’s a difference between being dumb and being misinformed. The American people are not dumb but they’re misinformed by the mainstream media. Dr. Carson understands this well.

He also had shared a wonderful answer he gave an NPR reporter who wondered why he doesn’t talk about race more often. (Of course, I know only too well about the expectation of white liberal journalists that black men in the public arena need to constantly talk about race, as if we have no business talking about anything else.) Dr. Carson explained that as a neurosurgeon, he sees inside people and gets a clear look at what really makes people who they are.

And it’s not their skin. This will come as news to the liberal media and to the Democrat Party, which are completely obsessed with race and think it is the key to everything in life. But what Dr. Carson understands (as do I) is that what really defines you is what’s inside you – the content of your character and your commitment to know what’s right and do it.

Finally, he answered a question about his presumed lack of political experience by reminding everyone that the greatness of this nation did not result from having lots of politicians around. It came, rather, from the ingenuity of the people in all walks of life. I’ve always found it hilarious in a sad sort of way that the political crowd judges people unworthy of service because they’ve spend their lives as something other than politicians. I thought I would have been a good president precisely because that’s not my background. My achievements have been in the private sector, where they expect results.

By the way, Dr. Carson’s achievements are in the field of science, which I thought the left considered one of the most highly esteemed fields imaginable. Isn’t that why they’re always going around complaining that Republicans are “anti-science”? You can’t very well be a neurosurgeon and be “anti-science.” Unless, of course, all “pro-science” really means is pro-left wing nonsense used to justify the same tired old left wing ideas Democrats have been pushing since time immemorial.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Tea Party activist Niger Innis considering congressional run

Niger Innis, a well-known black tea party activist, is seriously contemplating a Republican run for a U.S. House seat in Nevada in 2014.

Reached by The Daily Caller on Thursday, Innis confirmed his interest in running for Nevada’s 4th congressional district seat currently held by freshman Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford.

The 45-year-old conservative activist and Nevada resident is the chief strategist for TheTeaParty.net and national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the organization led by his father Roy Innis. He’s also appeared frequently as a talking head on cable TV.

Innis, who played a role on former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign in 2012, told TheDC that he’s set up an exploratory committee, has been speaking with campaign consultants and is raising money.

“It is time to make Congress functional and effective again,” his exploratory website states. “If Niger ran for Congress, he’ll work to make that happen with a common sense, conservative approach to doing what is best for you, your family and our country.”

If all goes well in raising money and organizing both local and national support, Innis will pull a trigger on a run, he said.

According to an invitation obtained by TheDC, Cain, billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Jeb Bush, Jr., and Nevada state GOP activist Amy Tarkanian were among those who attended a fundraiser for the Innis exploratory committee on Tuesday night.

The district covers a large geographic across Nevada, including both Las Vegas and  a number of rural counties.

Via: Daily Caller

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Book: Huntsman campaign peddled Herman Cain rumors to press

It was former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s struggling presidential campaign that fed the rumors to the press that Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain had been accused of harassment by multiple women during his business career — a story that ultimately led to Cain’s departure from the contest — a new book reveals.

Cain, the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, vehemently denied the claims at the time and shamed Politico, the outlet which eventually wrote about the anonymous accusations, for reporting the story.

But a big mystery since then: who fed Politico the story? Authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin write in “Double Down: Game Change 2012″ that a campaign that no one really expected was behind the oppo on Cain.

“After getting a tip from a donor, Huntsman’s researchers had dug into Cain’s past, discovered the first two sexual harassment claims, and fed the story to Politico,” the book recounts, according to an excerpt in U.S. News and World Report. “As they waited for Politico to turn their tip into a story, members of Huntsman’s circle asked each other when the ‘high heel’ was going to drop on Cain.”

An aide to Cain told The Daily Caller on Monday that the businessman and radio host has yet to read Heilemann and Halperin’s account, which hits bookshelves Tuesday.

The revelation that Huntsman’s campaign was behind the rumors is ironic, considering how the former U.S. Ambassador to China lamented during the episode that the Cain allegations were keeping Republicans from talking about real issues during the campaign.

“Every time another accusation comes up, it diminishes our ability to stay focused on the issues that really do matter for the American people,” Huntsman said in November 2011. “And I think that’s a disservice to the voters.”

Jonathan Martin, the chief Politico reporter on the Cain story who would know the source, did not reference the revelation in his review last week when he broke several juicy nuggets inside the new book for the New York Times.

Via: Daily Caller

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Opinion: All Mitt Needed To Do Was Sound Reasonable, He Succeeded

A Perfectly Plausible President

Mitt Romney needed to pass the usual tests for Republican presidential candidates in his debate Monday night with President Obama.

There was the Ford test (alternatively known as the Palin/Cain/Perry test): Would Mr. Romney say something so obviously misinformed, so manifestly silly, so revealingly ignorant as to disqualify him from serious consideration as a prospective commander-in-chief? He said nothing of the sort.

There was the Goldwater test (unfairly named, but reputations are stubborn things): Did Mr. Romney make pronouncements so belligerent as to make ordinary people fear for their children's safety—or at least provide David Axelrod a chance to make it seem as if he did? He did not, though that won't stop Mr. Axelrod from trying.

And there was the Bush test (not unfairly named but mistakenly understood to mean ideology when it ought to be about consistency): Would Mr. Romney find a deft way to define his foreign policy as something other than a retread of the 43rd president—but also as something defensible, distinctive, and (not least) identifiably Republican?

On this score, Mr. Romney succeeded, too, if only in a manner coyly calculated to raise the hackles of every conservative who has harbored doubts all along about the Massachusetts governor.

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Mitt Romney

"We can't kill our way out of this mess," he declared early in the debate, a point that, had it been made by Mr. Obama, would have been treated as evidence of Democratic pusillanimity. He offered a vision for Mideast social and economic progress so wholly unobjectionable it would have made any Peace Corps volunteer proud. On Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iran, drone strikes and China he offered policy prescriptions that—as Mr. Obama didn't fail to notice—were all-but identical in substance to the administration's.

He even got in a personal dig on President Bush toward the end, in connection to the auto bailout.

Via: WSJ

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Politics: Terrific: More Americans are getting government health care than are working

When you really think about it, it’s a stunning fact. There are now more people in America receiving government health care benefits – Medicare and Medicaid – than there are full-time workers in the economy.

It’s an eye-opener, but it’s more than that. It’s also evidence that we have a system that, by definition, cannot be sustained.

Medicaid and Medicare had a gross combined enrollment of 119,249,000 in 2011. At the same time, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said that 112,556,000 people worked full-time in the United States in 2011, including 17,806,000 who worked for all levels of government and 94,750,000 who worked for the private sector.

Who do you think pays for the benefits enjoyed by Medicare and Medicaid recipients? Private-sector workers, of course. Now of course, government workers pay taxes too. But where do you think the money comes from to the pay the salaries of government workers at every level of government? From private-sector workers! Without private-sector workers first paying taxes, there would be no government salaries from which to withhold taxes.

The bottom line is that private-sector producers ultimately must generate all the wealth that’s needed to support government at every level. We already know that the federal government is spending 25 percent of the nation’s entire $14 trillion economy, but when you include state, county and local governments, then add in local school districts all across the country, government is actually spending more than 40 percent of GDP.

President Obama likes to say that we have such a large deficit because the rich don’t pay enough taxes. No. The reason we have such a large deficit is that there are not enough people producing in the private-sector to pay for the size of government, and one of the biggest costs in government is the health care benefits we’re paying to 119 million people – more than a third of the entire population. It’s true that many of the current recipients have paid into the system during their lives, some for many years. But the bottom line remains that such a system is unsustainable.

Via: CainTV

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