Posted on 07/15/2015 4:16:48 PM PDT by iowamark
For the past three years, the FAMiLY Leader’s Leadership Summit has been a popular destination for Republicans who had an eye on a 2016 presidential bid. With the 2016 Republican presidential nominating process well underway, the event will boast its largest field of presidential candidates ever. Ten candidates will be in Ames this coming weekend for the FAMiLY big event.
The day-long event will feature Dr. Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Donald Trump, and Scott Walker. The most notable candidates who will not be in attendance are Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, and Rand Paul.
Even though there are ten candidates who will take the stage, the real battle to watch on Saturday will be the five candidates who have spoken at previous leadership summits. Rick Santorum is the only candidate who has spoken at all four leader summits the FAMiLY Leader has held. Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Perry will be speaking at their third leadership summit, and Bobby Jindal will be making his second appearance in front of this audience.
The caucuses are still over six months away, but with such a large field of candidates, some conservative leaders are already talking about conservative voters getting behind a candidate early in hopes to propelling him to the Republican nomination. Bob Vander Plaats, the President and CEO of The FAMiLY Leader, recently talked about his desire to see Iowa conservatives coalesce behind one candidate on IPTV’s weekend political show, Iowa Press.
When asked if he is planning to work behind the scenes to find a consensus conservative candidate like he did four years ago, Vander Plaats explained, “What’s going to happen is that we are going to be so divided that the person we don’t want to be our nominee is going to be our nominee.” Vander Plaats agrees that with so many candidates, it’s even more important to get behind one candidate this year.
“Our base, Iowans, and even people across the country are looking for leadership about who we should rally around,” Vander Plaats stated on Iowa Press. “The person we believe can champion a pro-family vision [is the one] we are going to rally behind, hopefully unite behind,” he continued. The desire to find a consensus candidate is strong with some, but isn’t always possible. “We are going to have to see how that plays out,” Vander Plaats admitted, “but we are going to do our best to make that happen.”
On the national level, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council has championed the same cause. “I think people are eager to get behind one candidate as soon as possible … given the circumstances and the inability to do it the last two times,” Perkins told US News and World Report back in March, “We always have far more solid conservative candidates than we do moderates, but as we’ve seen, all those conservative candidates slice up that conservative base, and the moderate advances.” The Family Research Council’s political arm, FRC Action, is one of the lead sponsors of the FAMiLY Leader’s Leadership Summit.
What Vander Plaats and Perkins are advocating for is nothing new to presidential politics, but as we have seen in the past, it’s never easy to sway voters to united behind one particular candidate. In 2012, Vander Plaats was initially dazzled by Michele Bachmann as the race took shape, but by Thanksgiving, his candidate was Newt Gingrich, and it was clear that he wanted to throw his weight behind the former House Speaker. The only problem was that the Board of Directors of the FAMiLY Leader was not on board with Gingrich, who didn’t sign the organization’s controversial “Marriage Vow.”
Ultimately the decision was made for the organization not to endorse anyone, but it would allow Vander Plaats, and the Chuck Hurley, the FAMiLY Leader’s legal counsel and legislative lobbyist, to publically back a candidate. On December 20th, less than two weeks before the caucuses were held, Vander Platts and Hurley endorsed Santorum, who at the time appeared be gaining momentum but trailed Gingrich and Perry in the polls.
In the 2008 and 2012 caucuses, social conservatives and evangelical voters naturally coalesced behind a candidate. And while it seems improbable today with so many candidates seeking the Republican nomination, as the caucuses near, voters will likely know who has a legitimate shot at winning the caucuses and who doesn’t. Any attempt to speed up the natural selection process voters will go through is a risky proposition.
Talking about coalescing around one candidate too early could turn people off, and for good reason. You have to give the candidates a chance to go out there and prove themselves. Since announcing last month, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has seen big crowds at the town hall meetings in Iowa that are being put on by his Super PAC. Jindal is polling in 13th out of 14 candidates in Iowa, yet he’s generating larger crowds than Huckabee, Cruz, or Santorum. Rick Perry isn’t polling much better, but he too is getting good crowds at his campaign events.
The two former Iowa Caucus winners, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, continue to set the pace at the number of events and counties each has campaigned in. Huckabee probably has a better campaign team in place than the others, and he polls better than the rest of his socially conservative competition. If any one of these candidates is the odd man out, it’s probably Santorum. But while Santorum once again lags in the polls and is discounted by many, he’s a hard candidate to write off because of his shocking, out-of-nowhere win in 2012.
The candidate who would likely benefit the most from conservatives uniting behind someone early is Ted Cruz. Cruz is the conservative warrior that should appeal to conservative activists and evangelical voters at the same time. His campaign and Super PAC have raised impressive amounts of money, and Cruz himself has often made the argument that he is the conservative who could win the nomination. The problem for Cruz is that he has yet to assemble the type of campaign in Iowa it takes to win the caucuses.
Those are the five candidates that I see duking it out in Iowa for the support of religious conservatives. There is one candidate that hasn’t been mentioned that could through a huge wrench into things – Dr. Ben Carson. Carson polls right up there with Huckabee, and while I don’t think he brings the same socially conservative credentials to the race as the other five, it appears as if he has strong appeal among social conservatives.
The FAMiLY Leader’s Leadership Summit may expose some of the differences between the candidates on various moral issues, but at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s going to start the process of determining which candidate social conservatives will rally behind. It’s just too early. That might not be music to the ears of Vander Plaats and Perkins, but things are actually more congested for the establishment candidates.
There are four or five legitimate presidential contenders vying for the support of the Iowa’s religious conservatives, but there are just as many if not more establishment candidates in race. That’s what is different between 2012 and 2016. Four years ago, it was Mitt Romney versus everybody else. In 2016, it’s a traffic jam no matter what lane you are trying to navigate.
The candidate who would likely benefit the most from conservatives uniting behind someone early is Ted Cruz.
But, I can't get past Cruz's votes on
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