One characteristic the two men share that has helped propel their respective candidacies is their determination to not be “politically correct.” Trump’s campaign is powered by the media attention he draws by saying racist, sexist, and otherwise outlandish things, and when he’s called out or criticized by the press for being an oafish lout, he brushes those complaints aside as the whining of the PC police. “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” he said at the Fox News debate, to raucous applause from the audience.
Carson’s entire political identity is centered around his willingness to defy political correctness and “say what needs to be said,” whether it be comparisons of Obamacare to slavery, or descriptions of the international Marxist conspiracy to undermine the United States through gay marriage. He has a talent for taking any issue and reducing it to a question of political correctness. “We’ve gotten into this mindset of fighting politically correct wars,” he said at the August 6 debate when asked if he’d bring back torture as president. “There is no such thing as a politically correct war.”