Republican field grows with 2 more presidential bids

Republican US presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson officially launches his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in Detroit, Michigan, May 4, 2015.[Photo/Agencies]

Carson got ahead of himself on Sunday, confirming his plans to run in an interview that aired on an Ohio television station.

The retired surgeon rested his longshot bid on his vision of the nation as "a place of dreams" where people can thrive when freed from an overbearing government.

Carson, the only African-American in the race, spoke in front of hundreds of people at Detroit Music Hall, a few miles from a high school that bears his name. A choir singing the chorus from Eminem's "Lose Yourself" set the stage.

He told supporters that he's not anti-government but believes Washington has exceeded its constitutional powers.

"It's time for people to rise up and take the government back," he said. "The political class won't like me saying things like that. The political class comes from both parties."

Raised in Detroit by a single mother, Carson practiced medicine and served as the head of pediatric neurosurgery for close to three decades at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Children's Center. He gained national renown in conservative politics after condemning Obama's health care law at a high-profile Washington event in 2013.

He has established a strong base of vocal support among the conservative tea-party movement, some of whom launched an effort to push Carson into the race before he set up an exploratory committee earlier this year.

Yet he has stumbled at times. He has suggested Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery, compared present-day America to Nazi Germany, and called problems at the nation's Veterans Affairs hospitals "a gift from God" because they revealed holes in country's effort to care for former members of the military.