South Carolina GOP fest: They liked them all, but they loved Ted

I’ll have more to say about it later; included in the crowd were people representing some key trends and cross-currents in the Republican race. But for now, a quick look at the bottom line.

The candidates spoke in Walker-Carson-Cruz order. Before the speeches, I talked to a lot of people with a broad mix of loyalties. There were plenty of Cruz fans — he definitely won the sign competition after his volunteers put up dozens of posters along the road leading to the building. But there were Carson fans, too, and some for Walker, plus supporters of some candidates who weren’t there, like Carly Fiorina. More than anything, there were people who said they haven’t decided, although if they had to make a short list, the night’s speakers would probably be on it.

It’s probably fair to say that each man did well but none was at the top of his game. Walker covered a lot of territory — national security, the Second Amendment, health care, taxes, religious freedom, Iran, China, voter ID, abortion, and other topics — but left the crowd a little mystified by not mentioning immigration. It wasn’t that he didn’t make immigration a central theme of this speech — it was that he didn’t mention it at all. Late in the speech, a woman in the crowd yelled, “What about the border? What about the border??!!” Walker, burned in recent days by missteps over birthright citizenship, did not respond.

Carson is affable and appealing on stage, and he was even more so at times Monday night. Like this moment, when he mused on his critics and doubters in the chattering class: “I know that a lot of the pundits and the so-called politically elite say, ‘Carson, are you kidding me? He’s a neophyte politically. He doesn’t have any elective experience. He can’t possibly know anything about anything. He’s an idiot savant.’ You know, they just go on and on and on…” Carson lost a little steam as his remarks went on, but by that time he had a lot of the crowd on his side.

Cruz spoke last and opened on a particularly gracious and well-received note. “Wasn’t it tremendous to hear from Scott Walker and Ben Carson — two incredible conservative leaders,” Cruz said. It was a smart thing to do, and a crowd that was already with Cruz became even more so. Cruz went through his agenda — repeal every word of Obamacare, “rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal,” secure the border, end sanctuary cities, move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and more. He threw in several jokes and a bit of piety — “No man who doesn’t begin every day on his knees is fit to stand in the Oval Office” — but most of all delivered an almost martial address that brought the crowd to its feet.

After the event was over I asked people who they thought did best — not who they supported, but who they thought did best. I set out to ask 50 people, but ended up overshooting the mark and asked 53. The result: 44 said Cruz did best, six said Carson, and three said Walker.

It was more lopsided than I would have guessed, although it should be noted that several people added that while they did not necessarily intend to vote for Candidate A, they thought he did best. Still, according to my extremely unscientific look, Cruz did very, very well with the Faith and Freedom crowd.

There hasn’t been much polling in South Carolina, at least compared to the number of surveys done in Iowa and New Hampshire. The most recent poll, taken by the Augusta Chronicle in the first days of August — that is, before the August 6 Fox News debate — had Cruz tied for seventh place in South Carolina. But surveys in other states and nationally suggest Cruz has gotten a boost from the debate, and in Anderson Monday night it seemed as if almost every one of the attendees had watched. Maybe Cruz isn’t as popular all around South Carolina as he was at the Civic Center, but it seems hard to doubt that he’s moving up.