Compared to politics, separating babies conjoined at the head in a 22-hour-long surgical procedure is nothing. I wonder if Dr. Ben Carson is thinking that right about now.
Carson has had a pretty rough time lately. The pediatric neurosurgeon studied hard and worked his way out of rough circumstances to make a name for himself at the top of his field. Today that name is being pummeled, and all because he opened his mouth.
Carson knows who to blame for the metaphorical beating he’s taking, though. White liberals. “They’re the most racist people there are,” he told radio host Mark Levin on Monday. “Because they put you in a little category, a box: ‘You have to think this way, how could you dare come off the plantation?’”
That was a quick turnaround.
Will the Democratic South rise again?
It was almost but not quite like being in the middle of the action on Inauguration Day. If you opened the door of the restaurant on the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol, you could practically hear echoes of President Obama’s speech and Beyonce’s rendition of the National Anthem, real or lip-synched. But it was all a little muddled. You could say the same about the state of the Democratic Party in the South.
I watched the inauguration ceremonies on big screens in the eatery, surrounded by Southern Democrats with a plan. I listened to strategies designed to re-establish the party’s dominance in the region it once owned. Because of issues of race, social issues and habit, for starters, it won’t be easy.