Who’s to blame for the rumor that Ben Carson was suspending his campaign after the Iowa caucus?
Was it CNN which accurately reported that Ben Carson was returning to Florida after the caucus, wouldn’t go to New Hampshire or South Carolina, would go to the Washington prayer breakfast, would be speaking at 9:15 regardless of the caucus results, and speculated that a serious Presidential candidate wouldn’t act this way? Was it the CNN tweet: “After the #IAcaucus, @RealBenCarson plans to take a break from campaigning.”
Was it the Marco Rubio campaign that “was pushing the narrative hard” that Carson was dropping out? Was it the Ted Cruz campaign that passed the CNN report to its caucus leaders? Was it the Rand Paul campaign that apparently did the same?
Was it Carson’s staff which, hearing of the CNN report, didn’t correct the speculation? Or was it the Carson campaign itself for giving CNN the information that led to the report and the subsequent speculation which they reported as “Breaking News”?
The media, the political establishment, and his political opponents say the caucus winner, Ted Cruz, is to blame.
Did Ted Cruz or his campaign create the news or speculation? No.
Did they invalidly pass on the CNN report? No.
Was the Carson campaign prevented from correcting the impression given by the CNN report? No.
Is there evidence that a single vote was changed? No.
Would Carson have place third or higher if the CNN information hadn’t gotten out? Not likely, Carson needed 25,000 votes to move into third place. Carson placed where the polls projected, fourth.
Since the Iowa Donald Trump has viciously attacked and lied about Ted Cruz’s role in what happened; that is the price of beating Trump who is sore loser, but a loser none-the-less.
Hypocritically, Marco Rubio has joined the attacks on Ted Cruz who he can’t best on the issues.
And the media, which wants an establishment candidate, a RINO, to win the primary, has also been attacking Cruz. To create a false impression the media withholds the actual information, e.g., the actual CNN report and the related tweets. The media doesn’t ask why the Carson campaign provided the information (unusual for a serious candidate) that caused the speculation?
For the timeline of this situation with the CNN report and the tweets, see: http://goo.gl/XOHj8R
Imagine for a moment if the tables had been reversed, if Cruz had done exactly like Carson did and leaked the plans to CNN, neglected to get CNN to correct their report, neglected to inform caucus workers that the CNN report was false, and in fact even made such strange plans that caused the speculation by not going directly to the next primary state, New Hampshire, or the primary after that, South Carolina, for several days, in fact didn’t hold a single public event (as far as I can tell, he didn’t even arrive here apparently until Friday or Saturday) between the caucus and Saturday night’s debate.
What if Cruz had done what Carson did and Trump had been aware of the information, the speculation, and passed it to his caucus coordinators? What would be said?
Everyone would say what a stupid and poorly managed campaign Cruz was running, and how that showed he wasn’t prepared to be President.
Everyone wants to take out Cruz, so they blame him for Carson’s blunders. Cruz is the target because he is the biggest threat to Trump, to the establishment, and, after Trump who they think they can take down eventually, to his competitors.
I admire Dr. Ben Carson; he would be a fine President. I will happily vote for him if he is the Republican nominee. But he is running a strange campaign, and his own actions and his campaign are to blame for what happened in Iowa. I am disappointed that Carson is trying to blame someone else for his campaign’s mistake, it is unworthy of him.
