Ben Carson: I'm Not Crazy

Via the National Journal:

Ben Carson—a Washington outsider, a world-renowned neurosurgeon, a favorite among tea-party insurgents—had a message Thursday for the Republican Party's most influential establishment figures: I'm not "crazy." Speaking to the Republican National Committee's winter meeting, Carson tried to challenge the caricature of him as a right-wing zealot by addressing—one by one—many of the individual controversies that have surrounded him, and dismissing them as lies from "the liberal media." Carson defended, among other things, his statements about Obamacare being the worst thing since slavery; comparing present-day America to Nazi Germany; and calling last year's Veterans Affairs scandal "a gift from God" because it revealed holes in the system. "I stand by those" remarks, Carson told the crowd. "I don't think there's anything crazy at all."

Later in his speech, Carson declared that Islamic terrorists are at least "willing to die for what they believe," implying that Americans are not.