Walker, Bush, Perry wow Iowa crowd

The Des Moines Register based that evaluation “on crowd reaction, a sampling of interviews with dinner guests and observations of the traffic in each contender’s hospitality room after the speeches.” Bush and Perry were given high marks for their performances while Walker, the front-runner for the state’s 2016 Republican presidential caucus, did well enough to maintain his lead.

They were three of eleven Republican hopefuls who appeared at the sold-out event, which featured 1,300 people. The race for the caucus, the first major event in the presidential primaries, is close, with many Iowans saying the party has fielded an unusually strong crop of candidates this time. Walker has led in all but two polls this year, according to RealClearPolitics.com.

Bush managed to rebound somewhat from a bad week, following an interview Monday where he appeared to say his brother, former President George W. Bush, was right even in hindsight to have invaded Iraq. He later said he hadn’t understood the question.

The controversy didn’t stop Bush from launching into a broad attack on the administration’s foreign policy. “Name a county where the relationship (with the U.S.) is better now than the day that Barack Obama came into office? Iran. Cuba. I rest my case,” Bush said.

Walker ingratiated himself to the crowd by pointing out that he grew up partly in Iowa, when his father was a pastor at a church in Plainfield. He recounted an anecdote about going door-to-door when he was seven years old to raise money for a state flag for the town’s city hall. “My mother, 40 years later, still has that flag,” he said.

Perry, who gave a lackluster performance at the last multi-candidate event, the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition’s April 25th gathering, showed more energy this time. He said Texas’ job growth showed how a strong economy could be created.

“From the end ’07 through the end of 2014, we created 1.5 million jobs [in Texas]. Juxtapose that with what was happening across the rest of this country. They lost 400,000 jobs. I kept waiting for the president in the State of the Union address to say, ‘I want to give a shout-out to the people of Texas for making the economic recovery possible,'” Perry said, adding, “I may have been dreaming a little on that one.”

The candidates were all held to strict 10-minute spots for their speeches. California Businesswoman Carly Fiorina was actually cut off mid-sentence by the music cuing her to leave the stage. Many in the audience booed the abrupt end.

Just prior to that the lone female Republican candidate had gotten a resounding cheer for a joke she made at Bill Clinton’s expense. She then noted that she had been asked by an interviewer on national television if a woman’s hormones would prevent her from serving in the oval office.

“Ladies, this is a test: Can anyone think of a single instance in which a man’s judgement was clouded by his hormones. Anyone? Including in the Oval Office,” she said.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham made the most hawkish comment of the night, stating, “If you’re thinking about joining al Qaeda or [the Islamic State], I’m not going to call a judge, I’m going to call a drone, and we will kill you. We’re at war, and I’m tired of treating the war as a crime,” said Graham, who serves in the U.S. Air Force Reserves as a senior instructor at the military branch’s law school, the Judge Advocate General School.

Sen. Rand Paul made a rare criticism of a fellow candidate at the event, chiding Bush, though not by name, for arguing that the Iraq invasion questions he faced this week where hypotheticals that had little relevance to the race. “The question was asked of one of our candidates this week, was the Iraq War a mistake? Would you do it again? It’s a valid question,” Paul said.

Other candidates participating in the event included retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former New York Gov. George Pataki, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and businessman/reality TV star Donald Trump.