Carson scrambles....

Carson tries to correct course on national security

But in military-friendly South Carolina, voters and veterans say his momentum is gone.

By Katie Glueck

In the past week, Ben Carson has visited refugees in Jordan, talked up plans for dealing with the Islamic State, and attempted to demonstrate commander in chief credibility at a presidential forum here in South Carolina.

But this course correction on national security has arrived too late.

According to nearly two dozen Republican voters, activists and operatives in South Carolina, Carson has lost his momentum in this first-in-the-South primary state, just as the polls say he has in Iowa and nationwide as well.

“Everybody knows the guy’s a brilliant neurosurgeon and a genuinely pleasant, pleasant, wonderful man,” said Chip Felkel, a Republican strategist based in nearby Greenville. “But these are not pleasant, wonderful times.”

A series of confused statements from Carson in the days after the terrorist attacks in Paris have been particularly damaging to his candidacy in South Carolina, which serves as home to military bases and large numbers of veterans and other voters who regularly cite foreign policy as a driving issue. And his efforts to change direction now — by visiting refugees in the Middle East, as he did over the weekend, or by laying out a plan to “strangle” the group known as ISIL or ISIS — aren’t enough to change hardening perceptions that on national security and global affairs, he is simply out of his depth.

“The current events, the current environment we’re in, and his struggles, and then the admissions by his own people, may have done some damage that will be hard to repair,” said Felkel, who is not attached to any of the GOP candidates. “It looks like he’s trying to bone up on it, but it seems a little late to be doing it. He’s been running for president for a while. People expect you to get your arms around it before now.”

In interviews this week and during Carson’s four-stop swing across the conservative Upstate region here, South Carolina Republicans said that while Carson’s soft-spoken demeanor and political outsider status endeared him to conservatives this fall, that approach is off-key in a presidential race now focused on foreign policy.

“I’m not sure if he has the foreign background, the world views, if he is well-versed there,” said Vic Dudash, 64, describing his hesitation about Carson ahead of the candidate’s event at a retirement community on Wednesday that was filled with veterans. Dudash dismissed the trip overseas as aimed at “just publicity.”

From failing to list countries he would ask to join a counterterrorism coalition, to claiming that Chinese forces were active in Syria, to a report that his advisers think he has problems understanding the Middle East, a narrative has emerged that Carson is too inexperienced to be commander in chief, said Don Rogers, a steering committee member of the Greenville Tea Party. And for better or worse, Rogers said, that narrative has stuck, making it harder for Carson to hold onto his base, much less broaden it.

“He’s a brilliant guy, I’ve read his biography, I’ve seen the movie, he’s absolutely inspiring and a great hero,” said Rogers, who is supporting Ted Cruz. “But he demonstrated recently he was not sufficiently capable of getting into the weeds on the issues about the Middle East ... it was seen by many people, all the way down to casual voters, who don’t pay much attention. That image of him seemed to spread like wildfire. And I just think it’s going to hurt him in the polls.”

It already has in Iowa, where, according to two polls last week, Carson has fallen from near the top of the pack to third place, behind Trump and Cruz. And nationally, a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday showed him dropping into third place behind Trump and Marco Rubio to sit tied with Cruz.

(The Quinnipiac poll landed the same day Carson received more bad news: top fundraiser announced he was parting ways over disagreements with senior staff, according to The Wall Street Journal. Carson called the fundraiser, Bill Millis, a “friend,” but denied knowledge of his concerns about Carson’s campaign.)

Scott Huffmon, a pollster at Winthrop University, where Carson also spoke on Wednesday, is in the middle of conducting a South Carolina poll right now. He expects that at a minimum, the new numbers will show Carson has struggled to expand his support with foreign policy-focused voters in the wake of the Paris attacks. And a trip to Jordan won’t help.

“One trip is not going to do it,” Huffmon said. “That’s going to be perceived as cosmetic by everybody except his hardcore supporters.”

The Quinnipiac poll found that among all Republican voters surveyed, terrorism was the second-biggest concern, following jobs and the economy. But among those who identified with the tea party, terrorism was the most important issue — and it tied for the biggest concern among evangelicals.

In several stops Wednesday, Carson, who still draws big crowds, sought to show that he has a handle on foreign policy, and is willing to aggressively take on ISIL. He talked up the importance of bolstering the Kurds, of cutting off access to the ISIL’s stronghold in Raqqa, Syria, and he called for a social media counteroffensive and for using cyber warfare.

“Some people say that’s dirty,” he said at Winthrop University, where he received a warm reception. “That’s OK, they’re dirty people and we need to deal with them. We can’t play nicey-nicey in those situations.”

The former pediatric neurosurgeon, who earlier this year appeared not to know that the Baltic states were members of NATO, was careful to note at another event that should Montenegro join the alliance, he would be “delighted” to see it become the “29th member of NATO.” And he offered up a wideranging, if at times meandering, foreign policy and national security prescription, ranging from calls to protect the electric grid to tough talk on ISIL.

“Some people say, ‘you’re a doctor, you're about saving people, saving lives, how can you talk about getting rid of ISIS, killing people?’” he said here at a national security forum. “When you decide you’re going to fight, you just need to go ahead and get it done. Fewer people will be killed, there will be less misery, if you go ahead and chop off the head ... and move on to the next thing.”

Carson is clearly aware that he isn’t perceived as sufficiently tough, stressing at one point that there is a difference between being “nice” and being “soft,” and that he is not “soft.”

But the perception that he is stands in contrast to the one enjoyed by Trump, who also lacks national security experience but whose poll numbers have only gone up since the Paris attacks, something Republicans here attribute to his tough talk.

“One, [Carson] doesn’t have any experience, and two, he comes across as not having any experience,” said Allen Olson, a conservative activist who founded the Columbia, South Carolina, tea party. Olson is supporting Trump, who, he says, “obviously does not have any experience with foreign policy, but he comes across as strong and firm and not wavering whatsoever. When he says something I think he means it ... at least with Trump, he says he’s going to bomb the crap out of them.”

John Slaughter, a federal employee based in Spartanburg who saw Carson’s address here, gave Carson credit for acknowledging that he is seen as “soft” and for pushing back on that perception. Slaughter is a longtime fan of Carson’s, but has recently come to be torn between Carson and Rubio because of the doctor’s national security challenges.

“That’s the primary concern of anybody out there waffling on who to vote for,” he said, adding that he appreciated Carson’s openness about his challenges but remains undecided.

A state party official, who is publicly neutral and so requested anonymity in order to speak freely, said that momentum in the state increasingly seems to be with Cruz and Rubio, both senators who can point to their committee work and official trips abroad to help burnish their national security credentials.

“It is a struggle for him,” this source said of Carson. “He has to show some knowledge of these sorts of issues, but you pick that up over the years, I don’t think it’s something that can be learned. It has to be something you’ve observed, be in the debate a long time, to really grasp.”