Jason Walke, a trial lawyer in Des Moines, said neither Mr. Trump nor another fiery outsider, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, “has a snowball’s chance of changing things in Washington the way Ben Carson does.”
“I believe someone as mild-mannered and gentlemanly as Ben Carson is just about the only kind of person that could,” said Mr. Walke, who heard Mr. Carson speak to a modest crowd on the lawn of a fraternity house at Iowa State University on Saturday.
Similar views surfaced in a focus group of Republicans last week in Indiana: Many criticized Mr. Trump as divisive while praising Mr. Carson as “wise” and a “gentleman.”
.. Mr. Carson’s events have a distinct feel. Voters approach him with something close to reverence, and he appears gracious and unhurried when interacting with them one on one. On Saturday, his wife, Candy, a Yale-trained classical violinist, sang an a cappella version of the national anthem on the lawn of the fraternity house, pausing midmeasure to tell the crowd, “Hands over hearts, please.”
.. “People are very attracted to Ben Carson’s bedside demeanor,” said Bob Vander Plaats, a leader of the Christian right in Iowa.
.. Mr. Trump appeals to a somewhat different demographic from Mr. Carson’s: working-class voters with high school educations, for whom social issues and religious beliefs are less important.
Some Bush strategists grumbled about what they described as an excessively large infrastructure at the headquarters. One department that will be particularly thinned out, advisers said, is the group of video producers and editors, called “Jeb TV,” that was assembled for what had been a robust digital effort.
.. “This means lean and mean, and it means that I have the ability to adapt,” he said, pointing to Mr. Trump’s unexpected rise. “Every dollar we can save in overhead is a dollar that goes on television, goes on radio, goes on media, goes on voter outreach.”
.. Whether Mr. Trump will now start spending heavily from his personal fortune on his campaign, as he has said he would do, remains unclear: He has donated roughly $1.9 million of his own money, and he has yet to spend on television.
.. A focus group of Republicans in Indianapolis this week, conducted for the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center, called Mr. Trump “self-serving” and “disturbing.” In contrast, Mr. Carson was called “wise” and “a gentleman.”
And while Trump’s favorable/unfavorable rating sits at 59-37 among Iowa Republicans overall, Carson’s is an incredible 84-12.
.. All of the things that might typically be considered weaknesses rate highly:
He said Obamacare was as bad as slavery? Attractive to 88 percent. Suggested an unconstitutional religious test for office? 73 percent. Made historically suspect claims about Hitler? 77 percent. There’s almost no way for Trump to outflank Carson on these things.
Lindbergh was known by then not only as the daring aviator who crossed the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis but also as a bigot so vile that F.D.R., upon reading one of his speeches, remarked that “it could not have been better put if it had been written by Goebbels himself.”
.. Donald Trump and Ben Carson, the only Republicans polling in double digits, daily clear their throats with that ritual preface of modern self-satisfaction—“I am not politically correct”—and then unleash statements, positions, and postures so willfully detached from fact that they embarrass the political culture that harbors them. Trump is willing to say anything—anything racist, anything false, anything “funny”—to terrify voters, or rile them, or amuse them, depending on the moment. The worst of his demagogic arousals are reminiscent of Lindbergh’s speeches at America First rallies and his fear, as he wrote inReader’s Digest, of a “pressing sea of Yellow, Black and Brown.” Carson, who seems as historically confused as he is surgically skilled, has said that Obamacare is worse than 9/11, “because 9/11 is an isolated incident.” What’s more, the two men’s rivals either fall into line or lack the persuasive powers and the courage to marginalize candidates they know to be dangerous.
.. If there is a campaign promise in 2016 that is almost sure to be fulfilled, it is that obstructionism and political war will continue, for within the G.O.P. the politics of perpetual fear goes on corroding not just a party but a nation.
