Ben Carson's new campaign manager, retired Major Gen. Robert Dees, says his strategy will be to work to be more friendly with the media in an effort to get out the GOP presidential candidate's message.
Carson and Dees were interviewed Monday by
CNN's Jake Tapper just days after a shakeup in Carson's campaign leadership. Campaign Manager Barry Bennett and Communications Director Doug Watts
quit Carson's campaign last week as Carson was announcing changes during a conference call.
Carson in early November was giving national front-runner Donald Trump a run for his money at the top of the polls, but quickly dropped as national security became a bigger topic when Paris was attacked by Islamic terrorists in early November.
Dees told CNN the new focus will be on the question of "volume" or "values."
"Is it about wild proclamations or about policy that leads us to moral high ground as Americans?" Dees asked, in a clear reference to the front-runner Trump. "Is it about a tempest or temperament?"
Dees is a conservative Christian, like Carson, and has said in the past that social experimentation in the military is weakening the nation.
"Everyone is not good at everything," Dees told Tapper. "And a lot of times because of perhaps what some would call social engineering, we have tried experiments within the military such as the role of women in combat."
Most women can't carry a wounded 230-pound soldier off the battlefield, he said.
Asked if his philosophy applied to gays in the military, Dees said "cohesion" is vital.
"The second priority would be that the commander in chief listen to the best military advice," he said, "So on a number of these social issues the best military advice has been thwarted and the administration has said do this, do this, do this, apart from military and defense considerations as a priority."
Carson told Tapper that as president he would make such decision based on evidence, not ideology.
"So, yes, I would be willing to sit down with people from both sides and examine the evidence and make decisions based on what the evidence shows," he said.
Carson's campaign numbers also have taken a hit after he said in an interview that he doesn't believe in hell. As a Seventh-day Adventist, Carson follows his denomination, which is at odds with most evangelicals on hell. Seventh-day Adventists do not believe in a literal hell.
Seeking to clarify, Carson told Tapper he has been taken out of context. He said he does believe in a rapture at the return of Christ, but not a "secret rapture" where people disappear from the earth while others are left behind — as made popular in the "Left Behind" books.
"And, you know, as far as hell is concerned, everybody has a different concept of what hell is," Carson said. "I personally don't believe in the situation where there's this dungeon and a bunch of little minions poking people forever and ever and burning them. That's inconsistent with the character of God. And that's not what the Bible says."
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