Ben Carson Acknowledges Dip in Polls: ‘People Feel That I Don’t Have Foreign Policy Experience’
Carson has lost his GOP front-runner status.
— -- Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson acknowledged his slip in national polls Monday morning, pointing to his lack of foreign policy experience.
Carson dropped 8 percentage points since mid-October according to a CNN/ORC poll released last Friday. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz, who has focused his efforts on Iowa, has climbed 12 points. And only 42 percent of Republican voters now say Carson has the right experience to be president, down from 64 percent five weeks ago, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released last week.
"Well basically people feel that I don’t have foreign policy experience and I understand why that would be the case because they listen to the narrative that only politicians can fix this but the fact of the matter is if you look at all the people who are running, how many of them have had foreign policy experience?" Carson said this morning on "Good Morning America." "The answer is no, not, not many. Maybe Hillary."
The retired neurosurgeon faced a number of foreign policy mistakes in the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris terror attacks, with his own advisers acknowledging that he has trouble grasping foreign affairs.
Some of his most notable foreign policy blunders include claiming the Chinese were militarily involved in Syria, his inability to name potential partners in the coalition against ISIS, and most recently his pronunciation of Hamas, which sounded more "hummus," the chick pea dip.
"He is not perfect," Carson adviser Armstrong Williams told Bloomberg News recently. "But he continues to surround himself with people and engage people that can enhance his foreign policy."
Carson said he has more experience with those "life and death" decisions than his presidential competitors and would surround himself with strong advisers if elected to the White House.
"But here’s the question, who has experience solving problems? Who has many 2 a.m. calls where they have to make life and death decisions?" Carson said Monday. "That’s the kind of commander in chief I would be looking for, who also understands the importance of utilizing people around him. You take a CEO. A CEO doesn’t know everything. That’s why they have a vice president for IT, a vice president for HR, and for mergers and acquisitions etc., but you know how to utilize those people and that is how you become successful."