Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Carson Spurns GOP Base With Support for ObamaTrade TPP

Pediatric neurosurgeon and 2016 GOP frontrunner Ben Carson has easily fended off most of the spurious attacks from the establishment press, but growing conservative outrage over the Carson campaign's recent announcement of support “with reservations” for Obama's deeply controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership deal may prove more tricky. Ironically, the Carson camp claimed Carson supported the deal, dubbed “ObamaTrade” by critics, as a “counterbalance to China’s influence” just two days after the Obama administration publicly invited the brutal Communist Chinese dictatorship and Russia's Vladimir Putin to join the TPP as well. Among many of Carson's conservative supporters, the pro-TPP position is likely to be a bitter pill to swallow, if it can be swallowed at all.    

The Obama administration has been promoting the controversial managed-trade scheme as the “most progressive trade agreement in history.” However, despite the stigma of the “progressive” label attached to the plot by its own chief architect, top establishment Republicans — often ridiculed as RINOs among conservatives — have been instrumental on the road to making ObamaTrade a reality. Among other concerns cited by critics is the fact that the TPP regime, which brings together 12 governments including communist and Islamist dictatorships, creates supranational kangaroo courts and regulatory bodies that are purportedly superior to U.S. and state law and court rulings. It also opens the immigration floodgates, and according to U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), represents European Union-style “global governance.”

But none of that appears to have fazed Carson, who recently soared to the top of multiple national polls on the Republican Party presidential primary before announcing his support for TPP. Initially, he expressed skepticism over the scheme with the left-wing Huffington Post, saying he would not give Obama “Fast-Track Authority” to ram it through. On November 6, though, the Wall Street Journal, citing Carson campaign spokesman Doug Watts, reported that Carson “believes the agreement does help to level the playing field in key markets and is important to improve our ties to trading partners in Asia as a counterbalance to China’s influence in the region.” The spokesman also said Carson was “now inclined to support TPP, with reservations.” In doing so, the Journal reported that Carson was “aligning himself more with the GOP’s establishment wing than with the social conservatives who have powered his campaign.”

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