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Carson Losing His Hold on Iowa

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libertybele:
Perhaps the bigger headline should be: Worried About Security, these Voters are Shifting Toward Ted Cruz

 Carson loses his hold on Iowa’s conservatives

Worried about security, these voters are shifting toward Ted Cruz.

SIOUX CITY, Iowa—Hours after terrorists attacked a hotel in Mali and a week after Islamic State fighters struck Paris, Ted Cruz took the floor here to deliver a harsh critique of President Obama’s Middle East posture and pledge a hardline approach to Syrian Muslim refugees.

It was exactly what this crowd of mostly conservative Christians wanted – and an ominous sign for Iowa’s weakened frontrunner, Ben Carson...

Indeed, they said the terrorist attacks have reordered the candidates in their mind, lifting Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio and, for many, making Carson an afterthought.

“He’s a great guy, he’s fun to listen to, but I didn’t hear anything substantive,” said Alan Hilgerson, a Des Moines-based physician who said national security is an "extremely high” priority for him as he considers the 2016 contenders vying for Iowa. Of Carson, he continued, “I don’t know that I’d want him as my president.”

Worse yet for Carson, at the Family Leader Forum organized by social-conservative icon Bob Vander Plaats, voters said the more they thought about Carson’s foreign policy credentials, the less comfortable they were with him...

...Carson and Cruz have been racing toward this collision in Iowa for weeks. Both have been courting the same Christian conservative community that makes up a crucial bloc of the state’s caucus electorate. But the turning point came when security and foreign policy were forced to the top of the GOP agenda by the terrorist attacks.

Carson landed here fresh off a string of fumbles that included struggling to name countries he’d ask to join a coalition to fight the group known as ISIS or ISIL and smarting from a New York Times story the featured one of his own foreign policy advisers saying the candidate was struggling to grasp key issues.

The momentum, according to activists, state lawmakers and other voters here, now appears to be with Cruz. And he seems to know it.

“On the Republican side, I think the Paris attacks infuse a greater seriousness to the search for who is prepared to be commander-in-chief, who has the experience, who has the judgment, who has the understanding of the very real and growing threats facing America,” Ted Cruz told POLITICO in an interview in Iowa.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-ted-cruz-iowa-conservatives-216124#ixzz3sBr9sXs5

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