Ben Carson Suspends Campaign, Will Return To Private Sector Grifting

We're really going to miss him

[contextly_sidebar id="xU09ktqLSA9y0oOECCyriBiuPPhBFgLf"]At CPAC Friday, Dr. Ben Carson formally announced that he's suspending his campaign. After he dropped out of Thursday's presidential debate last week, we knew this day was coming, but it's still sad to say goodbye to one of the 2016 campaign's most reliable sources of WTF? stories. Ah, but Carson will not really go away simply because he's not running for president. He will now continue to say endlessly dumb things, only from his brand new job as national chair of "My Faith Votes," an exciting new (?) nonprofit whose website explains its mission is "to inspire and motivate Jesus followers to vote.” You can tell it's a serious organization, because it features inspiring images like this:

Election. The word you were looking for is "Election." So yeah, this is a group that will fight against the silencing of Christians, whose voices are being suppressed by evil secularists who somehow made Christians stay home in 2012, and also forced them to put duct tape over their own beardy faces. That's gonna smart when Ben Carson tears it off. The theme of the group's first big organizing drive is apparently "Stop hitting yourself. Why are you hitting yourself?"

[contextly_sidebar id="VRjp3VqIjbTIyJf81WHuemrxxmrQO84m"]In his farewell-but-don't-get-your-hopes-up speech at CPAC, Carson assured supporters he'd still keep fighting for "We The People," a nifty and original slogan that he picked up somewhere, possibly from the wall of a pyramid. His announcement that he was "leaving the campaign trail" drew a standing ovation, though not for the reason that we'd applaud. Many members of the audience seemed genuinely sad to see him quit, because while he never won a single primary, he was so sincere and Godly, not to mention humble. You know a man is humble when he says the only reason he's seeking political office is that God forced him to. While Carson remained vague on whether the message to knock it off already had come straight from the Almighty, he did assure the audience,

Even though I might be leaving the campaign trail -- you know there’s a lot of people who love me even if they won’t vote for me -- I’m still going to be heavily involved to save our nation.

Nothing passive aggressive in that "people who love me even if they won’t vote for me" line, no sir.

[contextly_sidebar id="FljIgaZlU8KRnYlLmIrlB2CnDYWSo5Vx"]It's a shame we'll never get to see how Dr. Sleepyhead would have governed, with his soft gentle voice and his willingness to bomb Syrian children for their own good. Still, even as he bade farewell to the campaign trail, Carson treated us to some of that old-time Christian tough love he's so fond of, in a portion of his speech where he urged his supporters -- both of them -- to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, since she will literally kill America even worse than Barack Obama killed America:

She's going to get two to four Supreme Court picks. Now, that is - that's going to I think the future for our children, our grandchildren, all of our progeny. I think that's just as bad as taking a knife and stabbing them with it -- think about that. So let's not do that.

Yes, friends, if you don't vote, Hillary is coming for your children and will stab them with a knife, and don't you count on a belt buckle to save them, unless that makes for a more dramatic story when you write your memoirs.

So farewell, Ben Carson, and thanks for all the laughs. May your trips to the Popeye's organization remain unsullied by armed robbers and your grifting on the wingnut gravy train be ever profitable, as if there were any doubt of that. We honestly hope that you'll actually go away long enough for us to miss you, but we aren't getting our hopes up.

[ Yahoo Politics / Fortune / NPR ]