Buy off..

Ben Carson adviser: 'There is no pathway' to GOP nomination

By Kyle Cheney

Ben Carson's "been offered many deals" to leave the presidential race, a key confidant and adviser said Wednesday morning, but the retired neurosurgeon has no interest in quitting yet, despite lacking a pathway to the Republican nomination.

"Dr. Carson's not trying to help Trump, Cruz or Rubio. He's not in this cycle to do anybody any favors," said Armstrong Williams, a longtime friend of Carson's, who said he spoke to the doctor on Tuesday afternoon.

Williams acknowledged that Carson, a onetime poll leader whose support cratered in the fall, no longer has a route to become the Republican nominee for president.

"It's not about a pathway to him. There is no pathway," he said. "It's about his constituency and his base telling him to stay in the race."

"No one has a pathway to the nomination except Donald Trump," he added. "They're all in the same boat."

Williams said Carson had been offered a Florida Senate seat — among other carrots — to leave the race, but he declined to say who had made the offers. Carson, he said, was not interested in any other political office. "He has no interest in doing that ... That's politics, and he's not a politician," Williams said.

Williams added that Carson is now making unilateral decisions about his plans to continue in the race -- and even his campaign is "literally following his lead these days" and is awaiting his word on a time to end his campaign, if he chooses to at all.

"It could be next week, it could be today. It is his decision," he said.

Carson, he said, "wants to stay in front of voters" and plans to be a presence at Thursday's debate in Michigan.

"Everybody else is telling him to get out," Williams said. "He tried to be the good guy. He did not go to make this into a circus."