On Monday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer weighed in on the surge of the so-called non-politician candidates of real estate mogul Donald Trump and former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who find themselves in first and second respectively in the contest for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.
According to Krauthammer, the party is in what he described to be “mad as hell mode,” but ultimately Carson and Trump will have to be held accountable for their past statements, which could be to their detriment.
“I think the cliché is right, I think the conventional wisdom is right,” he said. “The Republican Party is now in the mad as hell mode. They’re not interested in anybody with experience. That’s the argument everybody in the field that is in single digits is trying to make. Right now, it’s not going to matter. Will it matter on the night of the Iowa Caucuses? I think it’ll matter more, but we’re in the stage where people are registering their protest. And I think my colleagues here are right — Carson is the kinder, gentler Trump. If you’re mad as hell and you don’t want to be throwing the food around, then you want somebody who is admirable in just about every way. Your resting place, the place where your park your vote, at least now, is with Carson.”
“But look, in the end, maybe I’m just elitist and old fashioned, but I think in the end it matters what you know and what you actually say. The things Carson and Trump have said on a large number of topics are puzzling and also indicating people who may not let us say be adept at policy. That does not seem to matter one bit. The other candidates are still criticized parse and taken down in many ways for a single slip of the tongue on a question about a wall in Canada or wherever. But the two leading candidates, Carson and Trump, are utterly immune to that standard. I don’t know that that can persist right through. I expect there will be a point where people are going to quote what they’ve said back to them and they’re going to have to answer.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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