Carson scrambles

Carson scrambles to patch up evangelical support

The retired neurosurgeon has left his Christian conservative allies puzzled and frustrated at times with statements that seem at odds with their seemingly shared beliefs.

By Kyle Cheney

Ben Carson has delivered lengthy and strongly worded condemnations of abortion in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest. The retired neurosurgeon has compared abortion to slavery, talked up his efforts to counsel patients against seeking abortions, praised the activists who produced the controversial series of Planned Parenthood undercover videos and appeared frequently at events sponsored by anti-abortion groups.

Yet not long after Carson told an interviewer Sunday that both sides of the nation’s abortion debate had engaged in “hateful rhetoric,” anti-abortion leaders lashed out at the Republican presidential candidate, who made his remarks in the context of the fatal shootings near a Colorado Planned Parenthood.

"Doctor Carson just ended his presidential candidacy," Troy Newman, who leads the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and recently backed Sen. Ted Cruz, told the conservative news site Breitbart, which posted a litany of blistering statements from anti-abortion advocates panning the retired neurosurgeon for the implication their fervor had any connection to the shooting.

After a two-day backlash, Carson took to Facebook to clarify his remarks – the second time in two weeks that he has been forced to walk back comments that infuriated conservative Christian allies. Carson prompted a similar blow-up after a recent Florida candidate summit where he described the emotional politics surrounding the life and death of Terri Schiavo — the Florida woman in a vegetative state who died in 2005 after her feeding tube was removed by court order — as “much ado about nothing.”

While evangelicals have fueled Carson's rise to the upper tier of the GOP primary, he’s also made a habit of leaving his Christian conservative fans puzzled and frustrated at times by statements like those that seem at odds with their seemingly shared beliefs. And it helps explain, in combination with his stumbles on foreign policy, why recent polls report his standing among evangelicals has eroded.

“Dr. Carson’s comments of late have many voters and leaders of faith scratching their heads and rethinking their support,” said Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster and leader of a super PAC supporting Cruz. “In just a few days’ time, he managed to sound like Planned Parenthood’s executives and Terri Schiavo’s husband.”

Carson’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

A new national Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday reports Carson has slid into third place, behind frontrunner Donald Trump and tied with Cruz and Marco Rubio. His decline appears to be partly driven by a drop in support from evangelicals. Trump and Cruz drew the largest share of the evangelical vote, at 24 percent apiece, with Carson pulling in just 19 percent – down from 32 percent, tops in the field, a month earlier.

Carson has faced questions from abortion opponents before, in part for his muddled statements on how he'd act to curtail the procedure as president. In his recent book, "One Nation," Carson suggests letting states decided on their own whether the procedure should be legal, a position that some social conservatives found perplexing from an ally.

This time, though, the pushback has been more pointed, after the Tampa Bay Times asked in mid-November Carson for his view on the Schiavo episode.

"I said at the time, 'We face those kinds of issues all the time and while I don't believe in euthanasia, you have to recognize that people that are in that condition do have a series of medical problems that occur that will take them out. And your job is to keep them comfortable throughout that process and not to treat everything that comes up,'" Carson said.

When the Times asked about Congress's intervention, he said, "I don't think it needed to get to that level. I think it was much ado about nothing. Those things are taken care of every single day just the way I described."

Carson's campaign later explained that his comments were misinterpreted. But it wasn't enough to assuage some critics. The Daily Caller reported that Carson talked to Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, but that Schindler was largely unmoved by Carson's clarification. Carson rival Rick Santorum, who as a Pennsylvania senator in 2005 backed congressional efforts to keep Schiavo alive,needled him about his comments on Twitter.

On Sunday, Carson drew renewed rebukes from religious conservatives after an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation." Asked by host John Dickerson whether heated political rhetoric contributed to the shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, Carson said that "hateful rhetoric" from the right and left is "detrimental to our society."

"No question the hateful rhetoric exacerbates the situation, and we should be doing all we can to engage an intelligence, civil discussion about our differences," he said. Pressed further on whether abortion opponents should "tone down their rhetoric," Carson said. "I think both sides should tone down their rhetoric and engage in civil discussion."

For Carson, it was a return to a familiar plea for a more civil discourse, but the context upset some anti-abortion leaders. In interviews, several told POLITICO that they believe Carson is aligned with them on issues but sometimes fails to articulate his position effectively.

“Ben Carson is genuinely pro-life but he has made two important missteps in recent weeks," said Steven Ertelt, president of Colorado Citizens for Life and editor of LifeNews. "What’s worse, when pro-life advocates have challenged him on those statements, Carson appears to blame pro-lifers for them instead of admitting he misspoke or saying he has a genuine disagreement with the pro-life movement on a couple of key issues.

"These gaffes are having a considerable effect," he continued. "At LifeNews.com, we’re hearing from a significant number of pro-life voters who are concerned about how whether he is sufficiently pro-life or understands pro-life issues thoroughly enough to become the nominee. With a field full of solidly pro-life candidates, Carson can’t afford any more blunders or he will see his chances of becoming the nominee fade away.”

Carson began to reframe his comments on the Colorado shooting Monday, in an appearance on Fox News’ "The Kelly File," telling host Megyn Kelly that he had spent his "whole life as a pro-life advocate," citing his many surgeries to save the lives of newborns and children. He said his comments were not intended to paint the entire anti-abortion movement as purveyors of "hateful rhetoric."

"There are some pro-lifers who will say things like 'I can understand why somebody would come into, you know, an abortion clinic and shoot it up,'" he said. "You know, that's kind of over the top. But in terms of saying things like killing babies, I say that myself. That's what it is. You can't sanitize that."

Later that evening, on Facebook – a platform Carson uses frequently to respond to media reports or criticism – he again attempted to defuse the tension.

"Some are twisting my words and I want to be quite clear," Carson said in a Monday night post after referencing the Colorado shooting. "I adamantly condemn the violence. I have no idea why this individual committed these acts. Clearly though, mental health played some role. I was asked about the rhetoric our so-called leaders use. My response dealt with the name calling after the shooting. I responded by saying that everyone in political discourse today shouldn’t hate people for simply believing something different."

“Some people have twisted my words to say somehow our strong beliefs caused this tragedy," he continued. "That is absurd."

With his polls numbers slipping and rivals like Cruz gaining among evangelical voters, Carson moved Wednesday to bolster his standing by rolling out endorsements from pastors from around the country -- an event in South Carolina that came a week after he appointed Liberty University's Johnnie Moore as a "special faith adviser," and one day after he named a Las Vegas pastor as his Nevada campaign chairman.

Moore did not respond to requests for comment.

While Carson’s missteps may have tarnished an otherwise sterling brand among Christian conservatives, the existing reservoir of goodwill leaves many willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America, said Carson is a "man of good character" who appeared to be "underserved, perhaps, by staff that should be briefing him more clearly on these issues."

Nance observed that Carson's status as an outsider in the presidential field is double-edged: it attracts voters sick of the status quo, but it also means he hasn't been in the political trenches with abortion opponents and learned the language of the movement.

"Being an outsider is good and it’s bad," she said. "I think this is indicative of where it hurts you not to really be someone who has come up in the movement and has worked on a day to day basis with these issues."