Earl O. Hutchinson

A year before the first GOP presidential debate, the thought that retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson would be anything more than comic relief in the 2016 presidential contest seemed delusionary.

But Dr. Carson not only is still in the GOP’s crowded presidential field, he, like businessman Donald Trump, is ahead of the supposedly more serious GOP contenders in poll numbers.

The bigger surprise is that Dr. Carson actually has become something of a minor cash cow in raising money, and there’s much talk of super PACs for him in the works.


This is pretty heady stuff for a candidate who, before Mr. Trump started zipping out a stream of silly, outrageous zingers on immigration, women and anything else that came to his mind, had the franchise on spouting ridiculous inanities. Dr. Carson hasn’t exactly reformed his ways and become the model of civility in expression: Witness his blast of the Iran treaty deal as anti-Semitic.

He’s also prompted more than a few eyes to roll with his inference that Planned Parenthood is a nefarious conspiracy to reduce the black population.

This silliness doesn’t mean much, given if the poll numbers that Dr. Carson is wracking up in Iowa. It shows him with a solid base. This is crucial.

The Iowa primary, the first, is the traditional make-or-break primary for presidential candidates. If Dr. Carson is willing to spend money and time needed to build a real party organization in the state, and can come up with a modicum of coherent policy initiatives, he could actually be the surprise in the primary. A strong showing here would put a stiff wind in his campaign sails in other primary states, especially in the South where his act could play even bigger and better.

Much of this depends on Dr. Carson. He’s stuck around this long mostly because he’s black, has a compelling rags to success, up-by-the-bootstraps story and can always be trotted out to take heavy-handed shots at President Obama.

He took his travelling act to Harlem recently and held forth at Harlem’s famed Sylvia’s Restaurant. He then walked the block spouting his standard platitude about how liberal, Democratic polices have supposedly failed black people, and especially the black poor. That showed that he’s capable of delivering his retrograde, anti-government message to more than fawning packs of GOP ultraconservatives.

The notion of Dr. Carson as a presidential candidate touches a deep, dark and throbbing pulse among legions of ultraconservatives who believe that President Obama and many Democrats are communists, that gays are immoral and that the health care reform law is “slavery,” as Dr. Carson infamously quipped, meaning a tyrannical intrusion by big government into Americans’ lives.

The road to the 2016 GOP presidential nomination will be a knock down, drag out, bruising, low-intensity war. The main contenders, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and a cluster of popular GOP governors, have money, means and a dedicated, entrenched following. They have wooed and courted the key state party leaders and potential party delegates who will make or break a candidate in the key party primaries later next year. Their work has been ongoing, and it requires a team of professional, connected and financially stout party officials to do the hard leg work required. A well-placed Dr. Carson sound bite or pithy remark won’t cut it. He’ll also need a program.

Dr. Carson’s poll surge, though, does show that he’s got the eyes and ears of legions of GOP rank-and-file voters. And in a season when voters again seem sick of the business-as-usual political crowd in Washington, and want some real excitement on the political stump, Dr. Carson may have more shelf life than he deserves.

The writer is an author and political analyst.