Hopefuls tailor remarks to social conservatives

An ecumenical slate of presidential aspirants representing a range of Republican Party perspectives and factions met a crowd that skewed heavily socially conservative in the latest Iowa caucuses cattle call on Saturday night.

For all their diverse views, though, most of the nine declared and prospective candidates who showed up at Point of Grace Church in Waukee tailored their remarks to the venue, punching up their rhetoric on issues of faith, religious freedom, abortion, marriage and support for Israel.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry opened their speeches to perhaps 1,000 Republican activists at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition's 2015 Spring Kickoff by recounting their journeys toward faith.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz highlighted his legal experience defending public religious displays. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee spoke like the Baptist preacher he once was. Retired business executive Carly Fiorina interspersed scripture with pointed insults for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker brought his copy of the Christian devotional "Jesus Calling" to the podium, winning nods and shouts of recognition from the crowd.

For Jeanette Hudson, a retired human resources director from Pella, stories of personal faith are a critical factor in evaluating candidates.

"That's the reason I'm here, because I wanted to hear what brought them to this point," Hudson said after the forum. "It's interesting to see what religion has done to their lives. That's very meaningful to me as a Christian and a voter."

Jindal won some of the night's biggest cheers when describing his conversion to Christianity, his commitment to religious liberty and his Indian family's embrace of the United States.

"I'm tired of the hyphenated Americans," he said, hitting his highest applause line. "We're not African-Americans, we're not Indian-Americans, we're not Asian-Americans. We need to stop dividing ourselves. We are all American Americans."

Fiorina described her staunch opposition to abortion as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in California and the role faith played in overcoming several family crises. She also bluntly attacked Clinton, criticizing her as inauthentic, inaccessible to Iowans and unaccomplished despite the positions she's held.

"Hillary Clinton must not be president of the United States, but not because she's a woman," Fiorina said. "Hillary Clinton cannot be president of the United States because she is not trustworthy."

That jab and others were a hit with the crowd.

"She was bold, wasn't she?" exclaimed attendee Kenney Linhart, pastor at the Kathedral, a church in Des Moines. "She could stand against any man, any woman."

Other speakers — for whom faith and social conservative positions are not as central to their political identities — threaded religious-based appeals more subtly into their stump speeches.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio set the tone in the first candidate speech of the night, arguing that the United States was founded not on a political idea but on the "spiritual principle" that people are born with rights given by God rather than government.

He staked out a disapproving view of same-sex marriage but avoided taking a clear position on whether it should be prohibited. He told the crowd to rising cheers that "traditional" marriage predated organized government.

"The institution of marriage as one man and one woman existed before our laws existed," Rubio said. "And thousands of years of human history teach us a very simple truth: The ideal setting in which to raise children and instill in them values is when a mother and a father married to each other living in the same home raise those children together."

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul similarly mixed socially conservative applause lines into his biographical story and libertarian views on foreign policy and civil liberties.

He segued a story on his career as an ophthalmologist and experience performing surgeries on premature babies into a discussion of abortion, arguing that rights should be recognized before birth.

"When does life begin? Some of them say in the nursery. Really? So a 7-, 8-pound baby has no rights whatsoever?" Paul told the crowd. "I think we can win this argument. I plan on being a big part of it, and I'm going to keep talking about it."

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, who was propelled to victory in the 2012 caucuses with support from social conservatives, focused much of his speech on boosting blue-collar workers.

The shifts in rhetorical emphasis by most hopefuls made sense given social conservatives' influence in the GOP nominating process, said Dennis Goldford, a Drake University political scientist who attended the forum.

"This is a segment of the party without whose numbers, without whose intensity, without whose activism, a Republican cannot succeed in Iowa or nationwide," Goldford said. "So of course these folks want to come in and introduce themselves and win their support."

For Bethany Dorin, a piano teacher from Pleasant Hill, the forum represented her first serious engagement with the 2016 caucus campaign. While she had heard a little from Cruz and Paul in recent weeks, she was unfamiliar with many of the others who spoke.

Dorin, 26, said she would measure them first of all on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, but also on health care, immigration and other policies.

"The theological things are really important to me," she said.

Many of the candidates and potential candidates present Saturday night held events across the state earlier in the day, maximizing their visibility in the first presidential voting state.

A handful of likely candidates, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, were absent Saturday night but were represented either by surrogates speaking on their behalf or videos recorded specifically for the Faith & Freedom Coalition crowd.