About two hours before the start of the Presidential Family Forum, The FAMiLY LEADER president Bob Vander Plaats was visibly worried.
Recent events had necessitated the presence of the U.S. Secret Service to provide security for the event. Then, the weather became a factor: the first snow storm was barreling through central Iowa just as the event began, dumping nearly a foot of snow on the Iowa Events Center in downtown Des Moines.
At the start of the event, only a couple hundred seats remained unused. A few moments later — as Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Carly Fiorina took the stage — nearly ever seat was filled.
And, despite interruptions — immigration protesters demonstrating against deportation of illegals attempted to shut down the event three times — the audience of nearly 1,800 Christian conservatives, as well as thousands more watching a livestream of the event online, got exactly what Vander Plaats and moderator Frank Luntz promised.
They got an in-depth look at the candidates on the stage that went beyond the standard stump speeches, sound bites, and political ads. They got to peer inside the candidates’ hearts, and to see who these people really are.
Luntz and the candidates had a cordial conversation about a wide array of issues around a very large family-style table. They also answered direct questions about their individual relationships with Christ and issues of their faiths.
There weren’t any “gotcha” moments, but there were some moments that probably opened the eyes of the audience. The biggest applause lines of the night came from two of the candidates deemed by most pundits to be the least likely to win: Huckabee and Santorum.
Front-runner Donald Trump didn’t participate, largely in protest of Luntz as moderator. Carson, who closely trails him in the polls, was once again largely subdued, refraining from jumping in on other candidates’ questions, and answering his own questions quietly.
Cruz responded with fire and conviction, but frequently reverted to repeating elements of past stump speeches. Rubio and Fiorina seemed to struggle with the format, which was meant to force the candidates to really open up.
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