Carson, Fiorina call for voters to take back their country, government

WILTON - A pair of GOP presidential hopefuls painted a bleak picture of America in decline Sunday afternoon, but said the nation can return to its previous greatness if citizens are willing to join them in reclaiming the country.

'It's time to take our government back,” Carly Fiorina said at Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann's barbecue in Wilton, winning enthusiastic applause from an audience of more than 450.

The public has lost faith in the federal government, she said, 'because it picks winners and losers, because it favors some over others, because they see the big, the powerful, the wealthy and the well-connected getting bigger and more powerful and wealthier and better connected, and they see the small and the powerless getting crushed.”

She was followed by retired physician Ben Carson, who said Thomas Jefferson predicted that the nation would reach this point - that people would not be paying attention, 'and the government would grow, it would infiltrate and it would dominate.”

However, Carson continued, Jefferson also predicted that before Americans turned to another form of government 'they would recognize what was going on, they would stand up and they would take control of their country again.”

'I say now is the time to do that,” Carson said.

Fiorina said voters, especially Republicans, have been talking about shrinking the size of government for 50 years, securing the border for 25 years and improving care for veterans for 20 years, 'but 307,000 veterans died before they got access to health care, and the VA is handing out $140 million worth of bonuses.

'That is a stain on our nation's honor,” she said.

'Yes,” she said, whatever issue a person cares about has 'gotten much worse under President Obama, but the truth is it didn't get any better before then.”

She's running, in part, 'because people don't think of themselves as having unlimited possibilities anymore.”

The nation needs a leader, not a manager, according to Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Managers stay between the lines and don't challenge the status quo.

'A leader understands their job is to challenge the status quo,” she said.

Carson also saw many problems facing the nation, but said voters have the power to fix what's wrong. His solution would be to change the tax code to make it fairer by adopting a flat tax, eliminating loopholes and getting rid of unnecessary regulations, 'which are killing us.”

'We have Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton running around saying the reason you have a pack of trouble is because of the rich and if we just take their money and redistribute it everything will be OK. That's not addressing the real issue.

'We can do this,” Carson said, adding that his career as a neurologist has prepared him for the challenges of the presidency.

'I can guarantee you, there's no one running who has had more 2 a.m. calls than I have and had to solve problems very quickly on the telephone to save people's lives,” Carson said.

And finally, he said voters have to stop being intimidated by those with other viewpoints and visions for America.

'You know, President Obama said we are not a Judeo-Christian nation,” he said, 'but he doesn't get to decide what kind of a nation we are. We get to decide what kind of a nation we are.”