By Stan Welch
A capacity crowd of more than six hundred fifty people turned out to see and hear Dr. Ben Carson, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Dr. Carson, a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, is something of a rock star in Republican circles, and his reception Wednesday night did nothing to dispel that perception.
Carson spent approximately forty five minutes moving from the entrance into the meeting room at the Anderson Civic Center to his table perhaps sixty feet away. Handshakes, hugs and ‘selfies’ by the hundred kept him surrounded by a throng of enthusiastic supporters. So dense was the crowd that getting close enough to ask questions was difficult. He did say that compared to the fifteen thousand surgeries he performed during his career, the rigors of the campaign trail are a piece of cake.
He also said that, of the two “terrible decisions made by the Supreme Court last week the reaffirming of Obamacare is the worst. “The gay marriage ruling is just so wrong on so many levels that it is hard to comprehend. But to affirm Obamacare does so much damage to the American tradition that the people are superior to the government. It literally turns our foundations upside down.”
Once he was introduced by Representative Anne Thayer and took the stage, he didn’t disappoint. He reminded the crowd that he never intended to run for President, or any other office.”My wife and I were set on retirement to Florida, where decades of twelve and sixteen hour days of work would finally be put behind us. And then I got invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast. Obviously, God had something else in mind for me.”
The prayer breakfast, where he challenged Obamacare while standing at a microphone next to President Obama, rocketed him to national prominence, and began what has become an impressive grass roots and rapidly growing candidacy. In support of that candidacy, Carson makes it clear that the heavy lifting will have to be done by the average citizen.
“It will take a great deal of courage to reclaim our nation. That nation is in deep trouble, and in a rapid tailspin. We need real leadership. By that I mean a president who will walk into the White House unconcerned with his re-election chances, and determined to do what is best for the country. I don’t even really want to run this time, so you can be sure a second term will be the last thing on my mind”, he told a laughing, cheering crowd.
“But leadership will not be enough. Leadership will only serve to encourage the Congress to reclaim their role as the legislative branch of government. Lately, they just stand by and watch the judicial and executive branches usurp their role. The Supreme Court has gone completely off the deep end, while the President’s use of executive orders to surpass Congress has been taken to a whole new level. Congress, for its part, has shown no spine, no courage, no leadership.”
Carson also warned that there are “forces of division at work, determined to drive wedges between us and fracture the nation. We are not each others’ enemies. They are the enemy, as they seek to divide us. We must combat them by becoming informed, by paying more attention to our nation than we do to Dancing with the Stars. Do not take your information straight from supposed news sources. Educate yourselves. An informed population is essential to a healthy nation.”
He also sounded a loud warning about the nation’s financial condition. While pointing out that paying off the national debt at ten million dollars a day would take five thousand years, he added that the debt itself is not the big problem. “There is a number called the fiscal gap. That number represents the difference between our unfunded liabilities, like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the amount of money coming in to actually pay for those things. That gap is the real problem, and it is currently two hundred and eleven trillion dollars, or about twelve times the national debt.”
He pointed out that our debt is sustainable only because we are the reserve currency for the world, a status that accompanies the number one economy. “But China is now the number one economy, and if the steps they are taking to clean up their banking industry to make theirs the reserve currency for the world ate effective, America will see a financial collapse that will make the great depression seem like a tea party.”
He concluded,”If I were trying to destroy America, I would divide the people, undermine our finances, let the military deteriorate, do nothing to improve or protect the electrical power grid, let the nuclear arsenal shrink,let the navy decline to the lowest level since before WWII, and allow our enemies to gain strength. Now, I’m just saying that is what I would do. I’m not saying anyone is actually doing that,” he said to a roar of approval.
He also offered a strategy to reclaim the nation, as he put it. “Thirty million evangelical Christians stayed home from the polls last time. Ninety three million eligible voters overall declined to vote. If each of you would just reengage three other people, get them involved, the power of the people would be felt once again. You must decide what you are willing to fight for, perhaps to die for.”
