Ben Carson Emerges From Fourth GOP Debate Unscathed

Rocked by news reports that questioned aspects of his life story, along with urgent damage control by his surrogates and his irritation at scrutiny of the up-from-poverty narrative central to his appeal, Dr. Ben Carson's curious, front-running presidential campaign seemed to have smoke billowing from under the hood.

That created an interesting question heading into Tuesday's Wisconsin debate: Would Carson's opponents in the fourth of the GOP's demolition-derby debate series try to side-swipe his wobbling campaign? Or would Carson make a tactical change, take his campaign out of slow-and-steady mode and hit them first?

The answer, it turned out, was neither.

Perhaps worried about the optics of siding with the media against a soft-spoken physician with a huge evangelical Christian following, or maybe sensing his gravity-defying campaign could fall to earth soon anyway, none of Carson's opponents used the bad press about his backstory against him.

No one asked if he'd really been offered admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point by a storied Army general. No one poked at the reported holes in the story of his allegedly angry, violent teenage years. No one wanted to know if the questions about Carson's veracity made him unfit for the presidency.

Even co-leader Donald Trump, who last week publicly needled the doctor about the inconsistencies, and Jeb Bush, who badly needed a debate breakout moment, held their fire.

Instead, there was a mild, one-and-done question about his truthiness -- which he deflected with a ready-made quip before pivoting to an attack on Hillary Clinton and the media.

On his second round of questions to Carson, Fox Business News anchor and debate moderator Neil Cavuto outlined the negative headlines, then asked Carson if news like that damaged a campaign "built on trust."

"Thanks for not asking me what I said in the 10th grade," Carson quipped. "I appreciate it."

Though he said he "has no problem being vetted," Carson insisted he was being treated unfairly. "What I do have a problem with is being lied about and being put out there as truth," he said, but he didn't specify who was lying or what was said about him that was untrue.

He then brought up Clinton and Benghazi, saying that she deliberately spread falsehoods after the embassy attack in Libya that left four dead, including a U.S. ambassador: "When I look at somebody like Hillary Clinton, who sits there and tells her daughter and a government official that no, this was a terrorist attack, and then tells everybody else that it was [triggered by] a video, where I come from, they call that a lie," he said.

"We have to start treating everyone the same," Carson declared.

End of discussion - literally. The audience cheered, Cavuto didn't ask a follow-up question, none of the other candidates jumped on Carson and the topic didn't come up again for the rest of the debate. Carson left the debate stage in Milwaukee unscathed, his front-runner status likely intact and bad press in his rear-view mirror, at least for now.

"People who know me," he said, "know I am an honest person."

As former Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Jeb Bush clashed with Trump over immigration, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina elbowed her way into the spotlight, Carson largely kept to the same playbook that catapulted him from relative obscurity to the head of the GOP pack. He didn't interrupt, patiently waited his turn for a question, promoted his own unique leadership and trumpeted American exceptionalism.

That didn't mean he went unscrutinized, however: Several news outlets ran real-time fact-checking during the debate, and a few of Carson's statements didn't pass muster.

Answering a question about the minimum wage, Carson declared the employment rate among black teens is only 19.8 percent, argued that minimum-wage hikes boost overall unemployment and stated he isn't for raising the minimum wage.

The New York Times, The Hill and CNN, among others, disputed all three assertions: about 75 percent of black teenagers have jobs, multiple studies show an increase in hourly-wage pay actually increase employment and Carson has said repeatedly, on the record, that he's for a minimum-wage increase tied to inflation.

Perhaps Carson's biggest blunder was on a national-security question. Asked how he would handle the growing terror threats from Islamic State group and the unraveling of the Syrian government, the doctor delivered a meandering, incoherent answer.

"Well, putting the special ops people in there is better than not having them there, because they -- that's why they're called special ops, they're actually able to guide some of the other things that we're doing there," he said. "And what we have to recognize is that Putin is trying to really spread his influence throughout the Middle East. This is going to be his base."

He went on: "And we have to oppose him there in an effective way. We also must recognize that it's a very complex place. You know, the Chinese are there, as well as the Russians, and you have all kinds of factions there."

"So we have to be saying, how do we make them look like losers? Because that's the way that they're able to gather a lot of influence," Carson continued. "And I think in order to make them look like losers, we have to destroy their caliphate. And you look for the easiest place to do that? It would be in Iraq. And if -- outside of Anbar in Iraq, there's a big energy field. Take that from them. Take all of that land from them. We could do that, I believe, fairly easily, I've learned from talking to several generals, and then you move on from there."

In keeping with the lack of substantive follow-ups by the moderators, no one asked Carson to unpack his answer or explain how the caliphate, which is more a concept than reality, would be destroyed.

Ultimately, Carson stuck to his themes, broad platitudes about his ability to lead and unite a polarized electorate, despite a strange, fairly morbid closing statement, which touched on drug addiction, deaths by abortion and suicides of military veterans.

"This is a narrative that we can change," he said. "Not we the Democrats, not we the Republicans, but we the people of America, because there is something special about this nation and we must embrace it and be proud of it and never give it away for the sake of political correctness."

U.S. News Senior Writer Paul Shinkman contributed to this report.

Joseph P. Williams is a news editor with U.S. News & World Report. E-mail him at JWilliams@usnews.com.