Ben Carson was on Todd Starnes’s radio show today. The only thing notable was that it is apparent that Carson’s obsession over the Iowa non-troversy, despite him finishing better than expected, is either pathological… or, if Erick Erickson is correct, a contrived fundraising gimmick.

Via BuzzFeed:

Ben Carson questioned the Christian morality of Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign for their actions the night of the Iowa caucuses, adding that Cruz’s response to his campaign’s actions was akin to Hillary Clinton’s reaction to the Benghazi attacks.

Asked by Todd Starnes if he was “satisfied with the way Sen. Cruz has handled himself as Christian” over the incident in Iowa, Carson said, “Well, let me put it this way, it’s not the way that I would have handled it.”

“I would have said if I didn’t agree with what’s being — which he did say that — I would make sure that it didn’t happen again,” Carson continued. “And I would take corrective action. Not to take corrective action is tacitly saying it’s okay, or it’s sort of like, as Hillary Clinton said after Benghazi, ‘what difference does it make.’”

“I’m not saying that it rises to the level up Benghazi, I’m saying it’s the same kind of attitude,” he said, when pressed by Starnes if the controversy rose to the level of Benghazi. “The attitude being, it’s water under the bridge, it’s gone by, let’s not deal with it.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Carson has said exactly the same thing. It was his staff that put out the story. If he is demanding accountability, perhaps he should start by firing the person who announced he had an urgent need to fly home and change clothes.

There are things that don’t merit further follow up. Telling a staffer to not do something again makes more sense than firing someone because your OPPONENTS are in a state of faux outrage and thereby cause paralysis among the survivors, making them afraid to act on their own initiative for fear of being fired. An erroneous text message is one of those. In fact, it really rates a “whatever.” The timeline demonstrates that the first messages went out after voting had started and the Carson campaign waited almost an hour to clarify what was a widespread misconception.

Iowa was not Benghazi. It was a nothingburger. It was a cheap political stunt by Carson and Trump that failed to work. The fact that Carson tries to conflate them indicates he is either delusional or dishonest.