Carson invokes Jim Crow to knock GOP primary rules

Ben Carson on Friday mentioned Jim Crow racial segregation laws while bashing the GOP’s presidential primary rules.

“During the Jim Crow era, those were the rules too,” he said on MSNBC. “They were written, everybody knew about them [but] it didn’t make them right. I’m not saying this is the same, but you get the point.

{mosads}“Just because rules are there, just because they’re written by somebody, doesn’t mean that they’re right or that you can’t review the system. There are lots of things we need to look at from a historical perspective.”

Carson said that frustration with the political process is fueling the popularity of outsider candidates in both political parties.

“It’s really about the American people and whether or not they’re being disenfranchised by a group of people who sit around and create arbitrary rules that tend to benefit them,” said Carson, who has endorsed GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

“This happens on both sides. That’s why we’re seeing people like Trump and [Democratic presidential candidate] Bernie Sanders doing so well, because people are tired of the status quo.”

Carson added that outrage over the GOP’s delegate and voting contest rules would only increase Trump’s standing with voters.

“Since all of this came up a few weeks ago, you’ll notice that Donald Trump is starting to surge again,” he said.

“I think that’s the people saying, ‘we don’t like the manipulation that’s going on,’” added Carson, who dropped his own White House bid in March. “‘We want our votes to count the way that we want them to [and] we want to set the direction of the country.’

“I don’t why it’s so difficult for the establishment on both sides to understand that. Actually, I do know why — they want to keep their power.”

Trump on Wednesday slammed the Republican presidential primary process as “a disgrace” and “a scam.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has repeatedly argued that the candidates understood his party’s guidelines when they entered the race.