Why Ben Carson is pulling even with Donald Trump in the polls

(Image credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 15 September 2015

The big news in the 2016 presidential race is a new New York Times/CBS poll showing retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson pulling just about even with frontrunner Donald Trump in the Republican primary. Carson has been rising steadily and quietly ever since the first GOP debate in August, but in comparison to Trump, the mild-mannered doctor is something of a wallflower, conspicuously avoiding combat even when goaded.

Still, Carson and Trump share the same appeal in that they are both outsiders. But while Trump is an outsider hip deep in a political melee, swinging at conventional candidates left and right, Carson is so outside that he seems more of a self-help guru or an inspiring Facebook meme than a politician. That's the takeaway from Peter Suderman's review of Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, the cheesy movie about his life that in many ways explains Carson's appeal:

[W]atching it now, as Carson swiftly rises in the presidential polls, is a reminder that his appeal is fundamentally apolitical, even anti-political, a backlash against the kinds of candidates who go to Iowa to deliver scripted sound bites and explain their seven different five-point plans while rehearsing a bullet-pointed list of their accomplishments in office. The very existence of a soft-focus biopic like this reveals just how different Carson is from every other candidate in the field: He's not a governor, or a legislator, or even a business executive — he's a movie-of-the-week-ready medical miracle worker with none of the political baggage that can drag a more conventional candidate down. [Politico]

Given Carson's distaste for political battle, he and Trump may not go head to head anytime soon, but they will share the same stage on Wednesday night in the second Republican presidential debate.