My experience at the 2015 Family Leader “Thanksgiving” Forum
Friday, November 20th I decided to check out the Family Leader’s 2016 Fall Family Forum. As we are closing in on the homestretch to the Iowa Caucus, I figured I might as well take advantage of seeing seven of them in one night.
I was able to chat with a few of the candidates prior to the event, and even had time to compliment Senator Cruz on his fly blue blazer and khaki pants combo.
Iowa was hit with a pretty significant snow event that evening, so I was very surprised to see the crowd the event was still able to draw. That just shows Iowans are pretty keyed into this caucus cycle.
The forum kicked off with the CEO of the Family Leader, Bob Vander Plaats and his wife, discussing their 7:14 prayer initiative. Vander Plaats, always the showman, finally yielded the floor to the seven candidates. Front runner Donald Trump was surprisingly absent. Not so surpsingly absent were a few mainstream candidates like Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Lindsey Graham.
Frank Luntz moderated the debate, and really just sort of winged it. There were some awkward exchanges like when he asked Dr. Carson about his Mom, and Dr. Carson replied that she is inflicted with alzheimer’s, but would probably be out shooting all of the liars attacking him with a shotgun if she wasn’t…
For the most part the event was fairly fluid, other than some deportation protestors. Oh, and a lady behind me who stood up with a picture exclaiming, “this is Sandra, she was a 3 year old cow that was murdered at a slaughter house. This is violence, not food.”
I’m not sure if one candidate truly distinguished themselves. It seemed like Carly Fiorina often ran off on some strange tangents, and a lot of questions were teed up well for Senator Cruz. Marco Rubio certainly didn’t hurt himself by attending, and although he took the matter of fact approach to answering a lot of questions opposed to the “religious” answer, he might have still won over a few evangelicals in attendance.
Overall from a young Iowans’ perspective, this one event full of the most evangelical voters certainly is not going to be the deciding factor to whom I choose to caucus for. Lets be honest, it was more pandering than policy, but I suppose everyone knows that going in. Still though, it was a cool opportunity to see so many candidates gathering in one spot, and no amount of snow was going to stop Iowans from seeing their candidates.
