{"id":4498,"date":"2015-10-28T08:04:03","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T15:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/carson-not-backing-off-nazi-slavery-examples\/"},"modified":"2015-10-28T08:04:03","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T15:04:03","slug":"carson-not-backing-off-nazi-slavery-examples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/carson-not-backing-off-nazi-slavery-examples\/","title":{"rendered":"Carson not backing off Nazi, slavery examples"},"content":{"rendered":"

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. <\/strong>\u2014 On the eve of the his party\u2019s third debate, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson promised not to curb his penchant for using extreme examples to prove his points, such as equating abortion with slavery and comparing Islamic State fighters to patriots of the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t buy the PC stuff. I just don\u2019t buy it,\u201d Carson said in a Tuesday interview with The Associated Press. He said the country can discuss complicated issues as adults, and he suggested people could learn from his example.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my goals is to get us to mature as a society,\u201d he said. \u201cWe should be mature enough to be able to talk about things without going into a tizzy.\u201d<\/p>\n

To date, Carson\u2019s style has not affected his climb through the GOP\u2019s ranks to challenge Donald Trump as a front-runner for the Republican nomination. Indeed, many conservatives embrace the unvarnished approach of the retired neurosurgeon who has never before run for office.<\/p>\n

Yet Carson\u2019s own advisers worry the rhetorical grenades may complicate his ability to go far in the competitive and still unsettled Republican field.<\/p>\n

Beyond his outsider status, Carson\u2019s appeal comes largely from his identity as a mild-mannered physician with a measured approach to the rough-and-tumble of politics. Regular references to Nazis and slavery, his advisers suggest, could threaten to obscure his larger message as a man with the temperament to quell the acrimony of Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not a (deliberate) strategy,\u201d said Carson\u2019s communications director, Doug Watts, pointing specifically to Carson\u2019s decision to use the Holocaust as a way to illustrate why the U.S. shouldn\u2019t enact tougher gun restrictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Nazis may not be the most perfect comparison,\u201d Watts said. \u201cWe\u2019ve spoken to him several times and said, \u2018You can find better examples,\u2019 and he understands that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet a few minutes later, in the interview with AP, Carson again argued against gun control by referencing the Nazis and repeated his recent comments about abortion and slavery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened in Nazi Germany can never happen again unless we forget it, unless we won\u2019t talk about it,\u201d Carson said.<\/p>\n

He noted that he first linked abortion and slavery two decades ago, as part of his shift from supporting abortion rights to opposing abortion in virtually all cases.<\/p>\n

The only major black candidate in the 2016 field of either party, Carson recounted Tuesday how two of his ancestors, brother and sister, were separated by different slave owners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt always makes me tear up a little bit when I think about what people had to go through,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was never pro-abortion, but I was pro-choice,\u201d he said. \u201cI felt that even though I didn\u2019t believe in it, I didn\u2019t really have the right to say what anybody else did. And the thing that really changed my mind about that was thinking … that if the abolitionists said that, said, \u2018Well, I don\u2019t believe in slavery, but everybody else can do whatever they want,\u2019 I think maybe we may still have slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carson also often uses extreme moments from his own life when talking with voters, including stories about his violent upbringing in inner-city Detroit. At a public event Tuesday to accept the endorsement of cage fighter Vitor Belfort, Carson said his temper as a teenager prompted him to try \u201cto stab another teenager\u201d years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the grace of God, he had on a large metal buckle … and the knife blade struck it and broke,\u201d Carson said. \u201cIt shows you how God, he took a knife that I was trying to kill somebody with, and he gave me a knife to save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carson\u2019s place in preference polls hasn\u2019t been affected negatively by his statements that he would not support electing a Muslim as president, his equating the passion of Islamic State militants in the Middle East to that of America\u2019s Revolutionary War soldiers, and suggesting that prison terms lead some inmates to choose homosexuality.<\/p>\n

Even as he spent subsequent days explaining each remark, his fundraising and polls numbers often improved.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Carson isn\u2019t bound by having to say what you think you have to say, and that\u2019s refreshing,\u201d supporter Rick Chaffin, a 60-year-old Air Force retiree, said recently at one of the candidate\u2019s book signings in Georgia.<\/p>\n

Matt Strawn, a former Iowa Republican Party chairman, pointed to Carson\u2019s months of outreach in the first caucus state. \u201cIowa caucus-goers really feel they know who Ben Carson is as a man,\u201d he said, \u201cwhich may help explain why these kind of headline-grabbing statements aren\u2019t really having a negative effect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watts, the Carson aide, said that for all the staff concerns, the candidate\u2019s preparations for the Wednesday debate have not included instructions on avoiding references to slavery or Nazis.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019ll find his equilibrium,\u201d Watts said. \u201cThat I\u2019m sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The candidate, meanwhile, said he has no qualms about taking the stage as a front-runner alongside Trump: \u201cI relish it.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Barrow reported from Atlanta.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow Steve Peoples and Bill Barrow on Twitter at: http:\/\/twitter.com\/sppeoples and http:\/\/twitter.com\/BillBarrowAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. \u2014 On the eve of the his party\u2019s third debate, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson promised not to curb his penchant for using extreme examples to prove his points, such as equating abortion with slavery and comparing Islamic State fighters to patriots of the American Revolution. \u201cI don\u2019t buy the PC stuff. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":4499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4498"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}