Pro-life doctor Ben Carson on Monday launched an exploratory committee for a possible run for the Republican nomination for president.
Terry Giles, Carson’s campaign executive, told the Wall Street Journal that Carson opened the committee, which will allow him to raise money that could eventually be transferred to an official presidential campaign. That would lead to a likely formal announcement of a campaign in May.
Over the weekend, Carson took on the so-called war on women and said it as ridiculous that pro-life people are tagged with the inaccurate and derisive label of opposing women’s rights just because they support protecting unborn babies from abortion. At that event, the Conservative Political Action Conference, Carson came in fourth in the straw poll, getting the support of 11% of attendees.
“I refuse to give into the PC police,” he said.
“If you’re pro-life, you’re ‘anti-woman.’ If you’re pro-traditional family, you’re a ‘homophobe.’ If you’re white, and you oppose a progressive black person, you’re ‘racist.’ If you’re black and you oppose a progressive agenda, you’re ‘crazy.’ And if you’re black and you’re pro-life and you’re pro-traditional family, they don’t even know what to call you. You end up on some kind of watch list for extremists!” he said.
“We shouldn’t submit to the PC Police, and to people who are trying to control us by intimidation and by IRS audits and by messing with your job,” the retired neurosurgeon said Thursday. “The only reason they can do that is because we sit silently by. That’s what they want us to do.”
He has made a number of hires lately, including a national finance director and aides in several early voting states, Giles said, adding that the campaign would soon announce more “major players,” who will join Carson’s team, the newspaper said.
Carson, a former neurosurgeon at Maryland-based Johns Hopkins University, has no prior political experience. He is a conservative commentator and author of “One Nation,” which topped the New York Times bestseller list in June.
In February, the 63-year-old Carson said he could form a committee to explore a bid for the nomination and make a formal announcement in May.
He had ranked fourth among potential Republican candidates in a Fox News poll of potential voters in Iowa, coming in behind former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.
Carson received standing ovations both when he took and left the stage and his pro-life views have been embraced across the country.
For example, in 2013, Carson shared what he believes about the supposed “war on women” at the Voters Value Summit. He said, “You know, there are those of us in this society who have told women that there’s a war on them because that cute little baby inside of them, they may want to get rid of it and there are people that are keeping you from doing that,” Carson continued. “And women say, ‘No, no, they’re not doing that to me! No!’ And they get all riled up.”
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“There is no war on them, the war is on their babies, Babies that cannot defend themselves. Over the past few decades, we have destroyed 55 million of them. And we have the nerve to call other societies of the past heathen. What we need to do is re-educate the women to understand that they are the defenders of these babies.”
Carson has said he would decide by May if he will run for president.
Currently, pro-life Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry and many others have mentioned their interest in the Republican presidential nomination.
