Ben Carson Won't Be There, Asks Rivals to Be Nice at GOP Debate

Updated at 3:30 p.m.

DETROIT, MI – A day after he implored his fellow Republican presidential candidates not to attack one another Thursday at the Fox News GOP Debate in Detroit, retired neurosurgeon and Detroit native Ben Carson pulled out of the debate and all but suspended his low-key, faith-based presidential campaign Wednesday.

Carson said in a statement that he will not participate in Thursday night’s FOX News debate in his hometown of Detroit.

“Even though I will not be in my hometown of Detroit on Thursday, I remain deeply committed to my home nation, America,” he said. “I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening’s Super Tuesday primary results. However, this grassroots movement on behalf of ’We the People’ will continue.”

His statement offered no clues about who among the remaining candidates he would support if he does, indeed, formally pull out of the race.

“I will discuss more about the future of this movement during my speech on Friday at CPAC in Washington, D.C.,” he said.

Patch's Earlier Report

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, often regarded as a mostly forgotten “nice guy” candidate in the Republican presidential field, is asking his rivals to be civil and play nice with one another during Thursday’s GOP Fox News debate in Detroit.

In a statement, Carson said that Americans deserve more than they’re getting from candidates “seeking the most powerful position in the free world,” and that the tenor of Republican campaign is an “embarrassment on the world stage.”

“A house divided cannot stand, and it is imperative the Republican Party exhibit unity by the candidates coming together with a pledge to talk about the many serious problems facing our country, instead of personally attacking each other,” he said.

Failing that, he said, the eventual nominee may not be able to defeat the Democratic nominee in the Nov. 8 general election.

The discourse between the Republican candidates hit another low point at last week’s pre-Super Tuesday slugfest in Houston and in the days since. At the debate, billionaire businessman Donald Trump called Florida Sen. Marco Rubio “a choke artist” and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz “a liar.”

It went downhill from there, and by the time verbal free-for-all ended, Carson, mostly overlooked in the debate, interjected, “Could someone attack me, please?”

Carson said he’s confident he and the other four Republicans — Trump, Rubio, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich — can reach an agreement that “we are not going to succumb to the media’s desire for a fight on the stage in Detroit” and rise above the “sophomoric attacks of past encounters.”

Carson said he was reaching out to other candidates asking for their cooperation, but it’s unclear how they’ve responded to his call for civility in Detroit.

The Detroit debate takes place at 9 p.m. Thursday, five days before the March 8 Michigan presidential primary, at the Fox Theatre. It will be broadcast on Fox News, and online at foxnews.com. A limited number of tickets are available through the Michigan Republican Party.

Moderators are Bret Baier, Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly, with whom Trump has a running feud that caused him to skip a debate in Des Moines, IA, before the first-in-the-nation Iowa Caucuses.

Michigan has 59 Republican delegates at stake in the primary.

The debate comes three days before Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debate in Flint, where an unknown number of people have been exposed to dangerous levels of lead in the city’s drinking water supply.

The GOP debate is a homecoming for Carson, who was born in Detroit, overcame his troubled inner-city youth and went on to become a celebrated pediatric neurosurgeon who successfully separated conjoined twins.

» Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr / Creative Commons