Ben Carson Unhinged and a Diminished Scott Walker

I. Ben Carson With His Whole Leg in His Mouth
In his most recent book, "Ave America," Ben Carson writes that agents working against this country's greatness include the political correct police, who use "faux hypersensitivity" to take power away from the majority of Americans. In the book, he writes: "Obama is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery." He also writes: "We live in a Gestapo age."  Carson has also publicly wondered if Obama might cancel the the election for his second term. Famously or infamously, Ben Carson has unequivocally said he would not vote for a Muslim for president, although, in political parlance, Carson and his staff have tried to "walk back" the statement.

In the wake of the mass killing in an Oregon community college this past week, Carson has said that had he been there he wouldn't have just stood there: he would have told those among him to charge toward the shooter. It is unlikely that those around him and maybe Carson, himself, would have charged toward a gunman's fire, as it would have made them primary targets and increased the chance that they would be killed or seriously injured. An unarmed former U.S. serviceman did charge a shooter and was shot five times.

Carson has used the inane slogan that: "Guns don't kill people; people kill people." Without the trigger being pulled, guns, themselves, would not kill anyone. Carson has also criticized President Obama for politicizing gun massacres and made the curious statement that he wouldn't go to the site of the Oregon community college shooting, because he is too busy, but might go to the site of a future firearms massacre. Carson entered the realm of the bizarre when he referred to treating a bullet-mangled body as the body itself not being as important as the defense of the Second Amendment.

II. The Diminished Scott Walker
The Marquette University Law School has periodically polled the favorability rating of Governor Scott Walker. About the same time that Walker declared himself as a candidate for President of the United States, Walker had a favorability rating in Wisconsin of 41 percent. Walker is now rated favorably by just 37 percent of polled Wisconsin residents. Given that a Republican governor in Wisconsin would likely have the support of 20 percent from a hard-core Republican base no matter what he/she did as governor, Walker would now have an approval rating from only 17 percent of the remaining 80 percent.

Some of Governor Walker's main achievements are not viewed favorably by polled Wisconsin residents. His cuts in traditional public education and his expansion of voucher schools were opposed by over 70 percent of those polled in the early spring of 2015. Walker not only expanded the number of voucher students in Racine and other parts of the state, but he raised the cap on income to a little over $78,000 to be eligible for a voucher to a private school. The voucher program was originally intended to be a social mobility ladder for low-income minorities. Even Walker's success in making Wisconsin a right-to-work state was supported by only 46 percent of those respondents in the poll cited above. This right-to-work result is somewhat surprising, because when people are polled on whether a person beginning work at a unionized workplace should be required to pay union dues, a majority of respondents customarily oppose such a requirement.

Media commentary on why Walker ended his presidential bid has usually focused on Walker running out of money -- he has been described as burning through a million dollars a month; however, given that Walker entered the campaign with a huge war chest and he could count on the Koch brothers to lavishly fund him if he remained viable, it seems to me to be more accurate that it was his frequent changes of positions on policy issues and/or his refusal to provide a position when questioned about a controversial issue were much more instrumental in forcing him to abandon the race. Although Walker apparently bamboozled a sufficient number of Wisconsin residents to survive three elections for governor, his national performance may have exposed Walker's glaring deficiencies to a significant number of Wisconsin residents.

ADDENDUM:
*Jews on Abortion - According to a recent poll, 93 percent of American Jews believe that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances, including 95 percent of Jewish Democrats and 77 percent of Jewish Republicans.

The Gordon Jewish Community Center in Nashville, Tennessee prevented Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee from holding a fundraiser there. The Center was apparently pressured by Catholic members from nearby major Catholic institutions to block Planned Parenthood.