Blog | If Sarah Palin was a brain surgeon, she’d sound a lot like this ...
So far, it has been hard to know what to make of Dr. Ben Carson.
For the longest time, he was celebrated as one of this country’s most decorated brain surgeons - until he started sounding as though he was auditioning to land a talk show on the Fox News Channel and comparing everything he doesn’t like - President Obama, homosexuality, the Affordable Care Act, the “liberal media” chief among them - to the Nazis and slavery.
It has been odd watching someone with such a stellar career sound so frequently like a carnival barker in the political realm and as he gears up for a 2016 run for the GOP presidential nomination.
But I have never been able to nail down just how to describe it, until now.
GQ put together a profile of Carson and topped it with the perfect headline:
“What if Sarah Palin were a brain surgeon?”
Palin seems to hate all the things Carson hates and puts his foot in his mouth just as often while trying to slam political enemies. So, yes, Carson is a lot like Palin, only with the significant difference that he is an actual brain surgeon with impeccable credentials in that field. She was governor of Alaska and a vice presidential candidate, nothing to sneeze at, either, but being a brain surgeon is on par with being a rocket scientist.
From the piece:
Of course, one big way Carson differs from most quixotic right-wing ideologues is his race. Conservatives, long frustrated that their disgust with Obama and his policies is regarded as racist, no doubt find it politically advantageous—and psychologically helpful—to have a black person offering those critiques. As one GOP fund-raising guru told Time, "There's nothing they love more than a black candidate who agrees with them on conservative views."
Carson's restrained manner helps a lot, too. Though his outrage can be excessive, it's never spittle-flecked. Rather, he speaks in the dulcet and intelligent tones of a surgeon reassuring parents that, although their child has brain cancer, he has the power to heal her. He shrewdly camouflages his vitriol as wisdom, dismisses those who disagree as fools, and, perhaps more than any other far-right candidate in recent years, gives establishment Republicans heartburn. They are, after all, eager to coronate an electable candidate to run against Hillary Clinton, not get drawn into a fractious fight with a Tea Party rock star who forces the eventual GOP nominee to the unelectable fringe. "When I call my mom back home, she asks me, 'What do you think of Dr. Ben Carson?' " one top Republican operative lamented to me. "I tell her he's not ready to be president, and she gets so mad at me."
This story was originally published March 25, 2015 at 1:33 PM with the headline "Blog | If Sarah Palin was a brain surgeon, she’d sound a lot like this ...."