Ben Carson will announce today that he is running for president. One of the country’s leading neurosurgeons, Dr. Carson is an African-American conservative known for his fiery rhetoric and his Christian faith.
I actually met him. He is impressive in many ways and has a compelling personal story. Do you think he has a chance? What impact might he have on the Republican party?
From Ben Carson Says He’ll Seek 2016 G.O.P. Nomination – NYTimes.com:
Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who has never held elective office, said on Sunday that he would seek the 2016 Republican nomination for president, joining the party’s fast-growing field.
Mr. Carson, who appeared on the political scene just two years ago and gained attention among conservatives for a speech highly critical of President Obama, planned a formal announcement of his candidacy on Monday in his native Detroit. He began his rise from poverty there to the heights of medicine — a path that shaped his rejection of liberal social policies in favor of self-reliance. . . .
He draws an aggressive contrast with Democrats over antipoverty issues, and in speeches has told of how his mother, a cleaning woman, struggled to stay off welfare because everyone she knew who took government aid never escaped it.
In an interview before his announcement, he said that “personal responsibility, hard work and compassion for our fellow human beings” were the keys of climbing out of poverty. Mr. Obama, by contrast, he said, “seems to believe more in a utopian view of cradle-to-grave care.”
Mr. Carson’s biography will feature prominently in his campaign. His mother, Sonya Carson, had only a third-grade education, but he went on to graduate from Yale and the University of Michigan Medical School, and at age 33 was named chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, becoming the youngest person, and the first black doctor, to hold the title.
He burst onto the political scene in 2013 with a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast that denounced the country’s “moral decay” and Mr. Obama’s health care law. The Wall Street Journal followed with an editorial, “Ben Carson for President.”
An independent political action committee seeking to draft him to run demonstrated his small-donor appeal by raising $13 million. It announced it had recruited leaders in all 99 counties in Iowa, which holds the first nominating contest.
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