WAUKEE, Iowa — The stakes were high. “Probably one of them will turn out leading our nation,” emcee Kayne Robinson said optimistically about the nine candidates who took their turns addressing more than 1,000 social conservatives at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s spring kick-off Saturday evening.
If one of them isn’t the next president, the odds are pretty good that one of them will be the 2016 GOP nominee for president. Iowa Faith & Freedom President Steve Scheffler told the members that “your least favorite is 1,000 percent better than Hillary Clinton."
“She is every bit as bad as Barack Obama,” he said.
The coalition often is pigeon-holed as being interested only in abortion and same-sex marriage, Scheffler said. But there’s more on the members’ minds.
“They want more than red meat,” he said. “They have a pretty long menu.”
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The candidates laid out their agendas at Point of Grace Church in Waukee.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio started the rebuttal declaring marriage “existed before government itself.” The notion of marriage being one man and one woman “existed before our laws existed.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz continued the response, criticizing the Democratic Party for deciding there is no room in the party for Christians.
“What a sad statement (that) today’s modern Democratic Party is so radicalized by its devotion to gay marriage there is no room for religious liberty,” Cruz said.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul stuck with the red meat menu even though libertarians sometimes part ways with the Christian conservatives on social issues. Paul said he’s tired of Republicans retreating on abortion and protecting human life. It’s Democrats, he said, who are out of step with the 84 percent of Americans who are not comfortable with third-trimester abortions.
“I think we can win this argument,” Paul said. “I’m going to push back. I’m going to keep talking about it.”
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he’s done more than talk, reminding the crowd that in Texas, parental notification is the law, abortion is banned after 20 weeks and a religious freedom law was passed in 1999.
In an upbeat message, Perry said it’s “time for America to be America again, and we’re just a couple of good decisions away from our best years.”
“We lived through Jimmy Carter, we’ll make it through the Obama years,” he said.
Louisiana is preparing a religious freedom law and Gov. Bobby Jindal said he won’t be bullied by liberals and “corporate America” like governors in other states.
Religious freedom, he said, is “bigger than marriage (because) it’s about the definition of freedom and liberty,” he said.
Carly Fiorina delivered perhaps the sharpest attacks on Clinton but started with a comparison.
“Like Hillary Clinton, I have traveled 1,200 miles. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, mileage is not the same as going the distance,” the former Hewlett-Packard CEO said.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum called for a minimum wage increase. Only 1 percent of American workers work for minimum wage “and we’re out there dancing on the head of a pin saying how a 50-cent or a dollar increase in the minimum wage is going to have an impact.”
“We talk about how we have to bail out Wall Street, we have to bail out auto companies, but when it comes to providing worker protection for the lowest-wage workers, we have to be Adam Smith,” he said.
Gov. Scott Walker, who said he’s been sustained by prayer, touted Wisconsin’s defunding of Planned Parenthood, anti-abortion legislation and the “castle doctrine” so citizens can defend themselves, their loved ones and property. He also talked about ending seniority and tenure so teachers can be hired and fired on merit and expanding school choice, balancing the budget and lowering unemployment.
He didn’t lay out his accomplishment to brag, Walker said, “but to tell you that if it can happen in a blue state like Wisconsin it can happen anywhere.”
