Poor Ben Carson just can't seem to get a break, but he sure can rake in the dough.
However, Carson's grifty connections come through Armstrong Williams, his business manager and head scamming consultant. That has caused some serious aggravation inside the campaign, resulting in the resignations of his campaign manager and communications director today.
Ben Carson's presidential campaign manager Barry Bennett and communications director Doug Watts have resigned.
Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, has struggled in the polls since October when he was rivaling Donald Trump for the lead in the Republican presidential race. He has since fallen to 10% in the latest CNN/ORC poll, which ties him for a distant third place with Marco Rubio, behind Trump and Ted Cruz.
His campaign has been marked of late by public sniping between Bennett and Watts with Armstrong Williams, Carson's business manager and sometimes public surrogate who has no official role in the campaign. Williams has criticized Bennett and Watts for not adequately preparing the candidate for public appearances, especially on foreign policy, an issue that has dominated the race in recent months.
Armstrong Williams is a grifter from way back, and was paid by the Bush administration to promote the horrible No Child Left Behind bill on his broadcasts. I think we can all see which direction Carson's campaign is headed in.
Update: Yes, there are hard feelings, mostly based on the fact that Williams jumped into the middle between Carson and his consultants and leaked the rumor that Carson was shaking up his campaign. That was the final straw.
Bennett said he hasn’t ruled out jumping onto another campaign but he first wants to rest. “Sleep. Sleep. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m very tired. "The internal [expletive] became what the campaign was about. It was sad. Petty. It became mind numbing to me. Having worked so hard on building up the fundraising operation and getting millions behind Dr. Carson so he’d be ready for 2016, I got pulled into this [expletive]. It’s not why I got in this business.
The drama of resignation:
“It started out like we always start out, ‘Good morning, how are you? How are things?’ Then I said, pretty simply, that I was resigning. He was very surprised. He said, ‘Can you think about it? Can you wait until the end of the day, think it over?’ I just said, ‘No. I’m sorry. I’m done.’ My point was, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
On Williams urging Carson to talk to reporters about campaign unrest, Bennett called it a “stupid move.” He said it was “absolutely correct” to describe his frustrations with Williams and the comments Carson made to The Post especially about disagreeing with Bennett’s advice as having driven his decision.
It may not be over, either.
“I expect lots of other people will resign today as well,” Bennett added. “The divide between the outside and inside is too deep. There is nothing we could change structurally at this point to make it better. It is what it is, Dr. Carson is who he is. I have so much respect for him but he wants to do things in a way that I don’t, so it’s best that I step down. I’m sure they’ll figure it out.”
