Ben Carson calls abortion murder but thinks states should decide whether it's legal. The retired neurosurgeon says it's wrong to accuse fellow Americans of treason, yet suggested President Barack Obama could be guilty of the crime. He advocates severe punishment as a deterrent for health care fraud, yet helped secure a lighter sentence for a convicted schemer.

On issue after issue, Carson’s positions conflict, a collection of statements, assertions and pronouncements that are often out of step with a conservative electorate whose support has driven him to the top of the polls. Carson so far has escaped scrutiny, but that most likely will change as he steps on stage Wednesday for the third Republican debate, this time as a pack leader.


Consider his position on vaccines.

In February, Carson wrote a column titled Vaccinations Are Good for the Nation. In it, he joined with the majority of scientists and medical professionals in supporting childhood vaccination. He went so far as to suggest it should be mandatory. He did not mention the stubbornly persistent myth that vaccines cause autism, but he referenced the related trend among some parents to delay vaccinations out of fear.

“Certain people have discussed the possibility of potential health risks from vaccinations,” he wrote during the sudden measles outbreak in the United States. “I am not aware of scientific evidence of a direct correlation. I think there probably are people who may make a correlation where one does not exist, and that fear subsequently ignites, catches fire and spreads. But it is important to educate the public about what evidence actually exists.”

Yet last month, when asked about Donald Trump's warning that some vaccines are dangerous, Carson altered his position. He stated plainly that there is no evidence linking vaccines to autism, but suggested he has concerns about vaccines not meant to prevent "death or crippling."

“There are a multitude of vaccines which probably don't fit in that category, and there should be some discretion in those cases," he said, tapping into the anti-government libertarian argument against mandatory vaccines. "It is true that we are probably giving way too many in too short a period of time." Both statements have been discredited.

Carson has, for the most part, escaped the intense scrutiny that has followed Trump, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Rand Paul and other candidates who have been considered Republican front-runners. And recent controversies — such as suggesting victims in a mass shooting in Oregon should've rushed the killer — have rolled off his back, and perhaps even deepened his support.

According to the latest New York Times/CBS national poll released Tuesday, Carson now sits atop the field, earning 27 percent of support. This is the first time he has bested Trump in a national survey and it follows a series of polls out of Iowa showing Carson in first place in that early-voting state.

Carson's rivals and Republican operatives have largely kept their criticisms private, expecting the popular neurosurgeon to fade away. But as he climbs, attack lines have surfaced. Trump, for example, has recycled the low-energy critique he used so effectively against Bush to now go after Carson. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, on Tuesday, labeled some of Carson’s policies “crazy.”

The Carson campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The list of conflicting positions is long. On religious liberty, for instance, Carson in his book, "A More Perfect Union," said no "religious litmus test" should ever be applied to someone seeking a government job. "Although there is no specific mention of the separation of church and state in the Constitution, a clause in this article makes it clear that government positions should not be denied to anyone because of their religious affiliation, nor should any particular religious litmus test be applied to those seeking government employment," he wrote.

Yet last month, Carson said he would not support a candidate for president if that person were Muslim, unless he or she were "willing to reject the tenets [of Islam] and accept the way of life that we have and clearly will swear to place the Constitution above their religion."

Carson's contradictions continued this week, when he said he had junked his long-held plan to eliminate Medicare and Medicaid. Scrapping the programs has been a feature of his health policy platform for years — he'd replace them, as well as Obamacare, with a system of birth-to-death savings accounts. But after a POLITICO story highlighted the details of his proposal, he told two TV interviewers he had scrapped the "old plan" in the past few months and replaced it with a new one thatstill would be based on savings accounts but somehow preserve Medicare as an option for the elderly.

It doesn’t end there. In his book, "A More Perfect Union," released in September, Carson analyzed the Constitution and paused to reflect on its definition of treason, the only crime laid out in the document. He said politicians on both sides of the aisle have overused the word to condemn political opponents. "It is important that we tone down the rhetoric and stop allowing ourselves to be manipulated to the point that we believe that our fellow American citizens are enemies or are guilty of treason," he writes.

He did just that, though, in February. As Congress and the White House tussled over a Homeland Security funding bill, Carson suggested the president could be considered treasonous if he stood in the way of security funding. At issue was spending on immigration measures the White House advanced by executive order.

Carson recommended a fix: "I would say, break the funding for Homeland Security up into parcels. Don't present it as a whole bill. That makes it much more difficult for [Obama] to stand in the way. And, if he does stand in the way, particularly things that are vital to the security of this country, then we can start talking about treason."

And on abortion, Carson’s position is at least inconsistently conservative. In one of his syndicated columns in May 2014, Carson said he would see pro-choice and moderate Republicans elected if they helped end “the murder of innocent babies” by ensuring more conservative judges are appointed to the bench. He writes that electing “a critical mass of conservatives and RINOs” — a term used by the right to label moderate Republicans — would help “save millions of babies who otherwise would be slaughtered.”

Yet in his newest book, Carson suggests abortion is a state, not federal, issue and that states should decide if the practice is legal. Compounding the confusion, in interviews he has sidestepped questions about whether he’d seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. “I would like to see it done in the right way,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” before adding he’d “ultimately” like to see the ruling undone and would appoint anti-abortion justices.

“He does not think the issue is one that can be legislated as much as having to win the hearts and minds of people, to discover the morality or immorality of abortion,” a spokesman told POLITICO in August.

Even where Carson is consistent in his positions, he’s been criticized by experts as supporting policy prescriptions that are overly simplistic and lacking in the nuanced understanding necessary for grappling with multifaceted issues.

This is especially the case on foreign policy and national security. In his 2012 book, "America the Beautiful," Carson says America should have gone into Iraq and leveled entire cities. Further, he suggests the reason America is afraid to do so is because "political correctness dictates we cannot kill innocent women and children in the process of destroying the enemy."

"I would have announced via bullhorns and leaflets that in seventy-two hours, Fallujah was going to become part of the desert because there were substantial numbers of terrorists hiding there," he wrote. "This would have given people time to flee before the city was destroyed, and is a tactic that would actually save lives not only of women and children, but also men."

Carson’s take on foreign policy has prodded some rivals to begin openly questioning his preparedness to lead America in foreign policy.

“He’s a brilliant guy but I don’t think he has a clue about what’s going on in the Mideast,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last week. Sen. Rick Santorum also told POLITICO he has concerns about Carson's readiness to be commander in chief.

In another position outlined in the 2012 book, Carson calls for a "Saudi Arabian Solution" for health care fraud. "Why don't people steal very often in Saudi Arabia?" he writes. "Obviously because the punishment is the amputation of one or more fingers. I would not advocate chopping off people's limbs, but there would be some very stiff penalties for this kind of fraud, such as loss of one's medical license for life, no less than ten years in prison, and loss of all of one's personal possessions."

But a few years earlier, Carson took the stand during the sentencing hearing of a close associate, Alfonso Costa, a dentist convicted of falsely billing insurers $44,000 for services he never performed. According to reports of the hearing at the time, Carson noted that Costa led a regional chapter of Carson's charity and that the work likely would ease without Costa's leadership. Instead of 18 months in jail, Costa received three years of probation and fines.

And,in some cases, he displays a lack of knowledge on the subjects he takes on.

Carson most recently ran into trouble when discussing the debt ceiling. When asked by an interviewer whether he'd lift the debt limit to ensure the country doesn't default, Carson responded by suggesting government should cut expenses to get the budget under control. When the interviewer, Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal, explained that the debt ceiling is a reflection of bills already racked up by Congress, Carson reiterated a desire to cut programs.

Carson’s rivals will increasingly identify these inconsistencies, so long as he sits atop the polls, Republican strategists warned. And it could come as soon as Wednesday night’s debate.

“No candidates running for president can expect voters to discover policy inconsistencies in Ben Carson without their own campaigns or their super PACs letting voters know about it,” said Jamie Johnson, an Iowa pastor who previously supported the short-lived presidential candidacy of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. “Sooner or later, the candidate who wants to surpass Ben Carson in Iowa has to make the case as to why voters should not choose Dr. Carson.”