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Posts Tagged ‘Richard Carmona’
October 24th, 2012 at 8:17 pm
How to Lose a Close Election
Posted by Print

No, I’m not talking about the abortion dustup in Indiana’s U.S. Senate race , where I’m not sure the Republican candidate is as embattled as the media thinks (reason #1: members of the coastal media and members of the Indiana electorate might as well be from different species).

Rather, I’m referring to the U.S. Senate contest in Arizona, where Democrat Richard Carmona — a former Surgeon General in the administration of George W. Bush — has managed to run surprisingly close against Congressman Jeff Flake, a laudable champion of limited government. There’s been some mud thrown by both sides in recent weeks, but the newest development is a self-inflicted wound from Carmona. From a blog entry by Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard:

“Obesity is the terror within,” Carmona told a University of South Carolina audience in early 2006, according to a wire report from then. “Unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9-11 or any other terrorist attempt.”

Will Arizona — the state that gave us Barry Goldwater — really send a man to the U.S. Senate who regards the ice cream freezer of your local grocery store as more menacing than an Al Qaeda training camp? Count me skeptical.