Perhaps "happy" isn't the best word, but the Ben Carson campaign is at least confident it has weathered the quick-forming storm over questionable details in Carson's various autobiographical writings.

"We're going to have a more-than-$10-million month again," said Barry Bennett, Carson's campaign manager, in a phone conversation Sunday night. "We're at four million already."

Bennett noted that after the campaign raised $10.8 million in October, media attacks on Carson appear to have spurred supporters to give even more. In recent days Carson has received more than 80,000 new contributions — that is, from people who have not given to Carson before, Bennett said. He also said Carson has added more than 160,000 new likes on Facebook.

"I was wondering how much I could pay CNN to do another hit piece," Bennett said. "The Politico piece is probably helping even more."

Carson has received some support from unexpected sources. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders pronounced himself uninterested in the story, and the Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, while making clear she does not want Carson nominated or elected, tweeted, "I don't know how many of us would survive fact-checking, 50 years after the fact, about our recollections of our childhood & adolescence."

Still, Carson campaign aides know journalists are out there searching for more. But if there are more reports, and they are along the lines of what has come out in the last week, it's likely Carson supporters will view them as cheap shots. They could backfire — again.

Still, Carson's Republican opponents — not the outspokenly critical Donald Trump but the others who are frustrated by Carson's Teflon Ben immunity to criticism — believe those reports could eventually have a cumulative effect. "These are the types of things that don't end a campaign," said a strategist for a rival candidate. "What they do is force voters to take a closer look at who you are and your record." According to this line of thinking, scrutiny on irrelevant topics — whether Carson smacked somebody as a child half a century ago — will eventually lead to scrutiny on relevant topics, such as his positions on issues like abortion and guns.

For now, Carson is focusing on his unconventional campaign. Bennett explained that the candidate doesn't have to do traditional things, like camping out in Iowa for days at a time, because he has gotten so much earned media attention as well as buzz on social media.

So, after taking time off for a book tour, Carson was in Puerto Rico Sunday, where, like rivals Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, he called for statehood. Then it was on to Florida, where Carson holed up with a team of economic advisers, seven in all, convened by George Mason University professor Thomas Rustici, preparing for Tuesday's Fox Business debate. Then it will be on to Virginia, for an appearance at Liberty University and some fundraising.

Carson's fundraising operation has raised eyebrows in the political world. It's extremely expensive. Of the $20.8 million Carson raised in the third quarter of this year, $11 million was spent on fundraising costs, mostly on direct mail. To some, that makes Carson's campaign look like a churn operation, a system designed mostly to raise money for the money raisers.

But Bennett said Carson began without an existing base of support, so he had to create a list of donors from scratch. "One thing we have to do that nobody else has to do, because we don't have a list, is we have to spend a lot of money building these lists," Bennett told me. That takes a long time — Carson will be doing it for weeks to come — but Bennett explained the fundraising list would eventually become "rocket fuel" to power the campaign in the crucial voting months.

To get there, of course, Carson will have to navigate an increasingly treacherous course. After a brief surge to the top of Republican polls both in Iowa and nationally, Carson seems to have returned to a close second behind Trump — although Bennett said he wouldn't be surprised to see the backlash against recent media attacks create a little boost for Carson.

Whatever the issues, the biggest challenge for Carson will be to keep the voters' trust. The single factor that most accounts for his popularity with Republicans is their belief that he is an honest man. Chip away at that belief, and Carson's campaign could collapse.

I asked Barry Bennett whether there is anything out there — any story, any revelation, any anything — that could damage Carson's reputation for integrity. "No," Bennett said. "Here's what I know about Ben Carson. He's the most devout and faithful person I've ever met. There are always going to be misconstrued memories. But he's not really capable of lying."