Cooper Allen

USA TODAY

DES MOINES — Debate answers often feature many canned phrases that you've heard over and over again, but that wasn't the case in Ben Carson's discussion of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The retired neurosurgeon, who took hits late last year over his foreign policy acumen, delivered an assessment of Putin when asked to respond to a hypothetical scenario about how he'd handle Russian aggression if he were president.

"Putin is a one-horse country," Carson said. "Oil and energy."

It was enough to get Twitter talking.