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Townhall
Straight Talk
or Doublespeak from Trump and Carson?
S. E. Cupp
Sep 11, 2015
"I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. Except when I don't."
This could be the campaign slogan for Republican candidates Donald
Trump and Ben Carson.
Both have predicated their presidential runs on their lack of political
experience, which they insist allows them to speak bluntly and without
the manufactured political correctness of other career politicians
beholden to special interest groups and the Washington establishment.
This is a big turn-on for conservative voters, rightly fed up with
politicians who have comically parsed the meaning of the word "is" and,
not comically, refused to correctly attribute the ideological ownership
of Islamic terrorism to Islamic terrorists.
As one participant put it in a now-famous focus group by Bloomberg and
Purple Strategies in New Hampshire: Trump "says it like it is. He
speaks the truth."
Carson, who has said that political correctness is "destroying our
nation," enjoys a similar reputation as a straight-talker. The moment
that made him famous, in fact, was when he surprised President Obama at
the National Prayer Breakfast to straight-talk the ills of Obamacare.
Straight talk is great. But, as I tell candidates running for public
office, it's the perfect marriage of straight talk and discipline --
and knowing when to use which -- that make a winner.
Of course, neither Trump nor Carson seems to think much of discipline,
leaving them only with straight talk, and lots of it.
So when they say one thing and then tell us they didn't mean it, you'd
think their supporters would be outraged for breaking their solemn
promise to say what they mean and mean what they say. If straight talk
is their entire raison d'etre, shouldn't they stick to it?
They don't. The biggest appeal of Carson and Trump -- according to
themselves and their supporters -- isn't based on anything real, just
very good spin-doctoring.
Over and over again, Trump and Carson rewrite their own comments the
way any other focus-testing politician would...
Read the rest of the article at Townhall
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