In a Republican field with no clear front-runner, a groundswell has begun for drafting a Horatio Alger-type candidate who carries massive, universal appeal. And many see real promise in a certain nationally recognized black physician.

The National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee has collected more than $2.8 million from more than 47,000 people in only six months, and garnered more than 7,000 volunteers to work GOP events, announced a committee press release on Tuesday .

The Facebook page, under the same name, has garnered over 85,000 likes.

“Dr. Carson said he will consider running for president if the American people are clamoring,” Vernon Robinson, director of the campaign to draft Carson, said. “Hundreds of thousands have signed the petition and the tremendous outpouring of donations shows that the people are indeed clamoring.”

Indeed, after having won the Linn County, Iowa straw poll in January with 87 percent of the vote, Dr. Carson will be a candidate at this week’s Conservative Political Action Committee meeting in Washington.

Carson, the former head of pediatric surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, came to national prominence last year when he sharply rebuked the president’s tax and health care policies at the National Prayer Breakfast, with Obama sitting nearby. The physician has since become a Fox News contributor.

Born in Detroit and raised in difficult circumstances, Carson pulled himself up by the bootstraps, won a scholarship to Yale University, graduated from the University of Michigan Medical College, earned fame at Johns Hopkins for pioneering the operation to separate conjoined twins, and established several foundations to help needy kids and promote reading, according to Biography.com and Wikipedia. He has received more than 50 honorary degrees, numerous awards — including the Presidential Medal of Freedom — and was portrayed by actor Cuba Gooding Jr. in the TNN original movie, “Gifted Hands.”

“Ben Carson is a political outsider with the background, experience, leadership and vision to heal the bitter divides in American politics and set our nation on the path to prosperity,” the committee calling for his candidacy said.

For more, read www.runbenrun.org

H/T: Daily Caller

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Richard Berkow

Former political news reporter Richard Berkow lost his idealism in the Kennedy years, and his innocence in Vietnam, Lebanon, and the Soviet Union. He hasn’t mellowed since, and can be harassed at [email protected]

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