Skip to main content

Good for what ails you

By


The 2016 Republican nomination may come down to an ophthalmologist and a neurosurgeon.  We already know about the incredible rise of Randall Howard Paul, aka "Rand" Paul, from a Kentucky eye doctor to US Senator on the back of the Tea Party in 2010, but the Tea Party is currently punch drunk in love with Dr. Ben Carson, a noted neurosurgeon, who has been outspoken in his criticism of the Affordable Care Act, taking the President to task at a National Prayer Meeting in 2013, which made him an overnight celebrity.

The President and Vice-President sat politely as the good doctor referenced the Bible, the Founding Fathers,  Alexis de Toqueville, the War of 1812, and the Bald Eagle in his condemnation of "Obamacare."  Dr. Carson has been riding this hobby horse the past year, and has inspired a great number of Teabaggers who see him as their political savior.

Unlike Herman Cain, the only skeletons in the good doctor's closet have long been banished and there is virtually no likelihood of a woman to emerge to challenge his fidelity, unlike "Hermanator" in 2012, who loved to boast of his virility at the expense of Obama.  A "Ben Carson for President" spokesman calculated that all Uncle Ben has to do is get 17% of the "Black vote" and "Hillary loses every swing state in the country."  Pretty compelling numbers, assuming Carson can get through the ugly nomination process.  He doesn't seem to like to field questions.

Carson did place third in a recent CPAC Straw Poll, so one has to consider him a serious contender.  It seems Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers are interested, but Carson is aiming at the religious heart of the rank and file of the Republican Party with his evangelical messages.

He found God toward the end of high school, pulled his inner-city life together and got into Yale Medical School where he excelled in pediatric neurosurgery, eventually being honored by George W. Bush.  You can see his life story in a made-for-TV-movie from 2009.

At a Heritage Foundation conference last year, Carson launched his harshest broadside yet at "Obamacare," claiming the ACA to be the "worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."  He seems to have forgotten all about Jim Crow, which he is old enough to remember.   No matter, his views are perfectly in sync with the Republican National Committee and political pundits at Fox News where he is often called in to offer his expert views on the subject.

Now that he is being considered as a presidential candidate, Ben has tried to expand his range of views, weighing in on everything from the Ukraine crisis to energy reserves in this op-ed piece for The Desert Sun, repeating the old Cold War maxims Republicans love to hear, but showing he is in tune with the current trends in renewable energy resources without stating any specific one that might get him in trouble.

Yep, Uncle Ben seems to be the man of the hour, the anti-politician who just might save America from the rampages of Socialism we have seen these two terms of Barack Obama, or so some Republicans would like to think.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more