Outside the Beltway

We Won’t Have Ben Carson To Kick Around Anymore

Doug Mataconis · Saturday, March 5, 2016 · 2 comments

Ben Carson is officially out of the race for President:

Ben Carson is suspending his bid for the presidency, the retired neurosurgeon announced Friday, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

“Even though I might be leaving the campaign trail, you know there’s a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me. But I will still continue to be heavily involved in trying to save our nation,” he said.

“Even though I might be leaving the campaign trail, you know there’s a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me. But I will still continue to be heavily involved in trying to save our nation,” he said.
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The outgoing candidate peppered his speech with implicit warnings to the country about its future, both for fellow candidates and for the media, which intensely scrutinized claims about his biography throughout the course of his campaign.

“You don’t need to have much of a developed brain to react, to react in fear,” Carson said in urging a more thoughtful, productive national political discourse. “Animals can do that; lizards do that.”

Later in the speech, Carson appealed to the audience to get active and informed.

“We cannot continue to allow ourselves to be influenced and molded by the political class and by the media. That is going to destroy us,” he said, remarking that it’s “kind of sad” that the press is the only business protected by the Constitution “because they were supposed to be the allies of the people.”

Carson signaled the end of his campaign earlier in the week when he announced that he would not participate in the debate that was held on Thursday in Michigan and broadcast on Fox News Channel. At the time, Carson admitted that he did not see a viable path forward for his campaign, something that had been blindingly obvious from his poll numbers  and his performance in the caucuses and primaries that have taken place to date. Earlier in the day, it was announced that Carson had landed a new job as Chairman of My Faith Votes, a nonpartisan organization that describes itself as being dedicated to increasing voter turnout participation among Christian Americans. So, I guess he got his Golden Parachute.