How the Carson campaign gave the impression its candidate was dropping out

Robert Eno:

The one question left unanswered amid the fight over campaigns sharing media reports about Ben Carson dropping out is why the report was so easy to believe in the first place. Carson’s campaign has been a series of stops and starts over the past few months – with a smattering of book promotion in between. It is through that prism that Carson’s Florida swing to pick up his laundry was viewed.

But first, a look at what happened on caucus night is in order.

Yes, CNN reported that it was “unusual” for a candidate who is “serious” about winning to “go home,” instead of campaigning. Here is the video from sixteen minutes before the caucuses opening.

Dana Bash said, “look, if you want to be President of the United States you don’t go home to Florida. I mean that’s just bottom line, the end of the story.” Bash continued, “if you want to signal to your supporters that you want it, that you are hungry for it, that you want them to get out and campaign, you gotta be out there doing it too. He’s not doing it. It’s very unusual.”

That is the bottom line. The Cruz campaign did not make something up out of thin air. They went off a report on a major news network that was broadcast sixteen full minutes before the start of the Iowa caucuses. That Cruz had a war room set up to take advantage of late breaking news and disseminate it to precinct captains is not something to look down at, but a show of strength of organization.
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Here is the report the Cruz campaign was talking about:


Not only was the CNN report accurate, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Cruz campaign passing that information on to its followers.  All the crocodile tears from the other campaigns look bogus and opportunistic.  This whole "scandal" is a total nothing burger.

It should also be noted that Carson actually over performed against his poll numbers in the caucuses which suggest it is unlikely that he lost any votes as a result of the report.  Ben Shapiro points out:

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... Cruz outperformed the polls in Iowa by 3.8 percent; Trump underperformed by 4.3 percent. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio outperformed the RealClearPolitics poll average by 6.2 percent. So, did Rubio cheat? How about Ben Carson, who outperformed the polls by 1.6 percent? What absolute tripe. Trump wasn’t the only candidate who significantly underperformed the polls: Jeb Bush underperformed by 1.3 percent, Huckabee by 1.3 percent, Kasich by 1 percent. These were all within normal Iowa poll movement.
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