Conservative firebrand Dr. Ben Carson, who holds cult-like status from supporters but is a favorite target of detractors, is providing critics a platform to disagree with him,
The Washington Post reports.
In American CurrentSee, a weekly online magazine appealing to black conservatives, Carson (its publisher) and Armstrong Williams (the executive editor and Carson's business manager), offered five critics the opportunity to point out "weaknesses of both Carson's policies and his politics."
"It's really easy to get tunnel vision unless you hear from all sides," Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, told The Post.
American CurrentSee is a product of The Washington Times.
The critics seized the chance to expound on a man who has no problem making controversial statements to impart his positions. Among those statements,
Obamacare has been the worst thing to happen to America since slavery; the VA scandal was a "gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care providers"; and
Obama's America is tantamount to Nazi Germany.
"Ben Carson, whose reputation for genius rests on the singular neurological feat of separating conjoined twins fused at the cranium, has displayed far less talent in separating himself from the brainless excesses that now darken the heart of black conservatism," Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson wrote in his essay for CurrentSee. "When reason gives way to political demonology it mocks the scientific progress on which Dr. Carson's surgical career depended. That's why he'd make a bad president."
It was Dyson's outspoken criticisms of Carson that served as the impetus for the idea to publish essays from Carson's detractors, Williams told The Post.
"[Carson] said he could only gain from hearing what people like him had to say," Williams said. "So I reached out to Michael Eric Dyson, who thought it was a joke. He said, 'Brother, you're serious? You want me to criticize him?' I said 'We're not like everybody else; we want to hear your criticism.'"
Conservative radio host Steve Deace characterized Carson's positions as hypocritical.
"You told Glenn Beck the Second Amendment may not apply in some urban areas, but also wrote a column for The Washington Times accurately explaining why our Founding Fathers gave it to us in the first place," wrote Deace. "You called the killing of unborn children 'murder,' which it is, but then you also praised a friend of yours running for U.S. Senate in Oregon because she was 'pragmatic' for not opposing it. So which is it?"
Republican political consultant Raynard Jackson warns Carson that he "risks being another flavor of the month," while a grad student pursuing a degree in clinical and health services penned a piece entitled: "Against Carsoncare: Free market is the wrong medicine."
Carson says the discourse, even with critics, is beneficial. He's not put off by the harsh tone.
"I expected it," Carson says of the criticism that he solicited. "Once you get close to the hornet's nest, they start buzzing. You're not challenging what's happening at all if they're not talking about you."
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