Ben Carson plans to keep quiet at the second GOP debate

Ben Carson at the first round GOP debate.

(Image credit: Mandel Ngan AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 9 September 2015

Ben Carson is going to leave the flamboyance to Donald Trump in the next GOP debate. The rising Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon tells The Hill that his performance on September 16 is going to look a lot like his last, despite comments then that his quiet approach got lost in the shuffle. "I won't change," Carson told The Hill.

I've heard people say, "You have to have more fire." They want me to stomp and bang my fists, but that's not who I am. I'm a calm and rational person. You have to be that way as a neurosurgeon. [Carson via The Hill]

Carson has good reason for not changing his strategy: It seems to be working. Though he has "almost no institutional support among Republicans or billionaires giving to his supporting super PACs," Carson is coming in second in recent presidential polls and gaining on current Republican frontrunner Trump, The Hill reports. And Carson predicts this will continue: "I think it's dawning on people that you don't have to be a politician to have solutions or good ideas, you just need common sense."