Ben Carson: ‘Don’t expect smooth sailing tomorrow’

In Jacksonville Monday, former GOP presidential hopeful Ben Carson made his case for the party’s nominee, Donald Trump.

That case: an urgent appeal, positing the New York real estate tycoon as the last bailiwick against the “secular progressives” who, Carson claimed, need just one term from Hillary Clinton to ensure “America as we know it will be gone.”

To that end, Carson predicted a messy election, saying “don’t expect smooth sailing tomorrow.”

Carson’s presentation was tailored to the GOP base: the room at the Trump-Pence HQ in a disused Southside strip mall was packed with over 100 people, largely Caucasian and clad in casual apparel.

In addressing that segment of the Trumpian GOP base, Carson said he expected to “see all the pundits with egg on their [faces].”

Those pundits: effectively adjuncts to “dishonest politicians and dishonest media,” devoted to “fundamentally changing the world we live in,” by supporting government “picking and choosing winners and losers.”

One example of such: Obamacare, the issue that launched Carson as a national tea party darling years back.

“This group over here,” Carson said (without specifying which group), “they’ve not had insurance, so we’re going to give it to them, but at what cost?”

Carson’s solution: to “take issues like health care out of the political arena,” which would be a neat trick given how lobbied up Big Pharma and the health care industry are in state and federal campaigns and legislative bodies.

Trump, said Carson, backs Health Savings Accounts, which could be extended to the “indigent,” said Carson, providing “something of value they actually own, and then they feel responsible.”

Carson then went on to discuss the “inner cities,” where the “schools are so terrible,” functioning as training grounds for “dependency and crime.”

“You can’t have pockets of weakness through society,” Carson intoned.

Carson made the moral case for Trump as the alternative to Clintonian “corruption,” saying Trump’s language is “mild compared to what I heard [growing up].”

People “need to understand that this is not about their offended sensibilities — this is about America.”

With Clinton appointments to the Supreme Court, Carson said “America as we know it will be gone,” a “Utopian society” led by elites with a vanishing middle class and an ever-expanding underclass.

“Secular progressives,” said Carson, would predominate in Hillary Clinton’s America.

Carson’s appeal is to a segment of the base — the same segment Trump channeled into.

The question to be answered Tuesday evening: are there enough in that segment to counterbalance this apparent “secular progressive” conspiracy Carson discussed Monday in Jacksonville?