Carson predicts ‘gigantic surprise’ Tuesday

URBANDALE - Former GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson and Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin sounded a rallying cry Friday for conservatives to mobilize Iowans in a get-out-the-vote effort next week that they say will carry Donald Trump to victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.

Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who ran an unsuccessful 2016 GOP presidential bid, said the nation's political elites, secular progressives and the 'incredible, nasty, twisted media” have tried to make Tuesday's choice about a person rather than focus on philosophical differences of a business-minded approach to preserve freedom versus big-government approaches that would fundamentally change America.

Carson told members of the Westside Conservative Club to reject the popular notion the Trump-Clinton race is a choice of the lesser of two evils, saying 'those people who think, well, even if Hillary gets in, we only have to deal with her for four or eight years. They're nuts.

'Everything will be changed by that time. The federal Supreme Court will be stacked,” he said, there will be even more rules and regulations in place to thwart jobs and economic growth, 'it will be a wall too high to climb at that time. America, as we know it, will be gone.”

Carson also rejected people who say they won't vote for Trump due to offensive and abusive things he has said about women and other Americans.

'Do you want to put in front of your daughters an example of someone who is a criminal, who will do virtually anything for money, who uses power to suppress other people, who treats the people around her like dirt. Is that an example?” Carson asked. 'Or somebody who was a billionaire playboy 10, 15 years ago and did things consistent with billionaire playboys, but has changed and now recognizes that he has a responsibility. Which one of those makes more sense to you?”

Carson said Trump has faults like everyone else, but he has 'plenty of integrity” as well. Carson said he knows personally that the New York businessman 'has been engaged in multiple conversations with some terrific people of God, and he has been praying and he has been searching his soul and, I think, if you've been paying attention, you've noticed a change in him in the last six months and you've noticed that he uses ‘we' a lot more than he does ‘I' now.”

Carson said he does not believe the polls are accurately measuring voter sentiment, and he believes 'we're going to see something quite shocking next Tuesday occur in this country because the political elites and the media, they don't really know the American people. They think they know them, and they think we're a bunch of stupid little puppets who can be manipulated by what they say, and I think they're going to be in for a gigantic surprise.”

Fallin, a former congresswoman turned governor, said it is critical that Republicans get to the polls and encourage their friends and family members to vote.

'It will not be business as usual in Washington, D.C.,” if Trump is president, she said.

A Trump administration would mean a free-market system with conservative principles and values, while Clinton - who Fallin called 'the mother of Obamacare” - would promote 'big, bloated government” that would intrude into business and daily lives with too much power and control, she said.

Fallin, who attended the Oklahoma-Iowa State college football game in Ames on Thursday evening, told the Friday breakfast meeting, 'It was a pleasure to be at the football game last night. Sorry about that” in reference to the fact the Sooners beat ISU, 34-24.