Surprise! Carson tiptoed around the will-he-won’t-he topic of suspending his campaign for the first half of his speech at CPAC until he dropped it: “Now that I am leaving the campaign trail...”
The audience immediately reacted: “We love you, Ben!” Carson replied, “Yeah...”
“There’s a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s not a problem. I will still continue to be heavily involved in trying to save our nation.”
Carson used his speech in part to criticize the petty politics and penis jokes that have plagued the race. “In order to really make it in this cycle you have to be loud and boisterous and you have to be willing to attack people,” he said. “I left that stuff in high school.” In the soothing voice of a man who sounds half-asleep, Carson explained the path forward: “What we have to do now is just sort of calm down and use the amazing intellect that God has given us. ...You don’t need to have much of a developed brain to simply react, to react in fear. Animals can do that, lizards can do that. We are human beings.”
Throughout, Carson’s speech was characteristically bizarre, but he managed to make a few things clear, including his deep dislike for Saul Alinsky. Bye for now, Ben Carson.