Ben Carson Gaining: Is “Nice” Making a Comeback?

By Published on September 2, 2015

Republican primary voters spent the summer applauding the loud, flashy, brash Donald Trump. But slightly below the radar, the calm, mild-mannered retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was steadily securing ground behind the real estate mogul.

Now, Carson has caught up to Trump, at least in Iowa, two new polls show. Both candidates are political outsiders, but their styles are starkly different. So how can the quieter candidate—whose most memorable lines from the GOP debate included the quip, “I wasn’t sure I was going to get to talk again”—be surging?

“I call it the power of nice,” says Rob Taylor, an Iowa state representative co-chairing Carson’s Hawkeye State campaign. “When you compare the two [Trump and Carson], it’s kind of a yin and yang. Carson’s approach is kind, gentle, smart and effective, and what he’s practicing right now, we haven’t seen in a long time in politics.”

Polls bear that out: Carson’s favorability rating is the highest in the field in Iowa. Niceness, however, can be a liability. Just ask Tim Pawlenty, former Minnesota governor and 2012 GOP hopeful who had already dropped out of the race by this time last cycle, in part because of his perceived lack of grit.

The difference seems to be that Carson hasn’t shied away from saying what he thinks, or being politically incorrect. He built a conservative following after criticizing President Obama to his face a national prayer breakfast. And he has been known for controversial comments on gay marriage, Obamacare, and the IRS, among other things.

Read the article “Ben Carson Gaining: Is “Nice” Making a Comeback?” on realclearpolitics.com.

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