Ben Carson Prevails in GOP Straw Poll

In the end it was probably the soothing tone of the brain surgeon, the last voice you hear before slipping off into the black sleep of anesthesia, that won the first straw poll of the GOP 2016 presidential race. That and the sine qua non of Republicanism, the rags to riches story involving a sainted single mother and a son who disdains entitlements as character-weakening.

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who won with 25 percent of the vote in a field of 17 candidates, wasn’t even supposed to be the featured speaker at Friday night’s Southern Republican Leadership Conference, but he answered an emergency call and landed among a group of people who’d just spent two days listening to politicians warning of the threat of ISIS not only in the Middle East but maybe even within our borders.

The gathering, billed as the largest political convention in the history of the state of Oklahoma, drew an overwhelmingly white and middle-aged crowd of about 1,400 attendees who wanted to take a gander at a herd of GOP presidential candidates.

Could we have another viable Black Presidential candidate, this time from the GOP side of the aisle?