Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination may have felt comfortable confessing their weaknesses Saturday before 3,000 conservative Christian voters gathered at a church in Des Moines in a conversational forrmat in which Fox News contributor Frank Luntz attempted to elicit not-yet-heard answers about various factors shaping their religious beliefs.
For example, when Luntz asked the candidates to talk about something in their lives that hadn’t worked out, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich came close -- but didn’t quite say -- he’d cheated on his wife.
“Part of me was truly hollow, and the more I worked, the hollower I got,” he said. “If not for an intervention, I might have collapsed totally. … All of that required great deal of pain, some of which I caused.”
Less cathartic by comparison, Texas Congressman Ron Paul said he disappoints himself every time he sees a television interview. “I’m my worst critic,” he said. “I can’t stand watching myself on TV. All I see are my imperfections.”
Businessman Herman Cain, who had choked up earlier while talking about surviving cancer, said he regrets not having spent more time with his children.
“I have been very successful in my business life and I owe that to God Almighty being in my life,” he said. “No one is perfect. I believe I have had a series of little failures rather than one big disaster. I don't believe I was home for my kids enough when they were young.”
“If you want to see God laugh, tell him your plan,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said. “I always wanted to be a veterinarian, go to Texas A&M and marry that girl on the front step. Then God introduced me to organic chemistry, and I became a pilot in the U.S. Air Force.”
The other two candidates attending The Family Leader’s Thanksgiving Family Forum – Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum -- didn't answer the question in a friendly back-and-forth before an influential group of voters that has swayed Iowa elections in the past.
A year ago, the Family Leader political action committee – the same organization sponsoring Saturday’s "Thanksgiving" conversation – helped lead a successful campaign to toss three Iowa Supreme Court justices from the bench after the court’s unanimous 2009 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in Iowa.
And four years ago, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee courted this group of voters and won the Iowa caucuses. His Iowa effort was led then by Republican strategist Eric Woolson, who’s now steering Bachmann’s Iowa campaign targeting the same group.
In an interview, Woolson acknowledged “different challenges this time around.”
“You’ve got the evangelical base and the home-school base, and they are both more fragmented, and are seeing more choices,” he said. “Many of them are still in the process of choosing the candidate they are going to support.”
That also makes former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s decision to skip the Family Leader forum – and Iowa Gov. Branstad’s big birthday bash and fundraiser expected to draw 500 activists and big-time GOP donors later tonight – risky, some likely caucus-goers said.
He also skipped the Ames Straw Poll, a forum moderated by Iowa Gov. Branstad, the state Republican Party’s Ronald Reagan Dinner last week and another major presidential forum for Iowa social conservatives last month, the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition. Branstad has publicly criticized Romney for staying away.
Linda Golay called Romney “so arrogant’ and said his aloofness toward Iowa suggests he doesn’t take the state’s role in the process seriously. Her husband, Owen, called him “a charlatan” because he’s “waffled on everything from gun rights to abortion.”
“We don’t need another Obama-lite,” he said.
Vicky Angove of Cedar Falls, who was among those seated on the stage for the two-hour forum, said Romney made a miscalculation, and Iowans will remember his truancy come Jan. 3.
“We Iowans are a bit stubborn,” Angove said. “We want to see them, hear them, touch them and know them – be closer to them than just seeing them on TV. TV can only tell you those things they want you to see.
“There’s no such thing as a perfect candidate,” Angove said. “We don’t care if you show us your flaws. We know you are not going to be perfect.”
“It’s hurt him with Iowans,” agreed Richard Rogers of West Des Moines. Rogers attends as many campaign events as he can, but said he hasn’t talked to anyone who supports Romney, making him curious about who the former Massachusetts governor’s Iowa supporters are.
“Either they haven’t been attending party meetings, or they haven’t been speaking up,” Rogers said.
Carole Sherman of Williamsburg called Romney’s strategy pragmatic, especially as it relates to today’s forum. “I don’t think he would get those votes anyway,” Sherman said. “He’s changed his stand so many times on issues like abortion and Massachusetts health care . He’s just too moderate”
Gingrich, who is leading in some polls, said last week treating Iowa as a flyover state was a mistake and is now working to regain support in the state.
A late October Des Moines Register poll put Romney in striking distance of winning the caucuses, with 22 percent of likely participants supporting his candidacy. He quietly opened an office in Iowa last week, but has kept a low profile.
Romney won the Ames Straw Poll in 2007, but was stung by caucus voters five months later. He finished second with 25 percent of the vote, compared with Huckabee’s 34 percent.