DES MOINES, IOWA \u2013 They\u2019ve traded fire from behind podiums on the Republican presidential debate stage.<\/p>\n
But White House rivals Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy sat down together on Friday around the same table for a very different discussion in front of a large crowd of social conservative voters in Iowa, the state whose caucuses kick off the 2024 GOP presidential nominating calendar.<\/p>\n
All three candidates shared personal and at times emotional stories at a presidential Thanksgiving forum hosted by The Family Leader, a politically active and influential social conservative group in a state where evangelical voters play an outsized role in Republican politics.<\/p>\n
And each of the candidates spotlighted the difficulties they endured in having children as they showcased their opposition to legalized abortion.<\/p>\n
\u2018I actually haven\u2019t shared this story before,\u2019 Ramaswamy said as he described his wife Apoorva\u2019s first pregnancy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018About three and a half months in\u2026 one day she woke up, she was bleeding. She had a miscarriage. We lost our first child,\u2019 Ramaswamy shared.<\/p>\n
Moments later, he signaled for his young son to join him on stage.<\/p>\n
DeSantis also noted his wife Casey\u2019s miscarriage, and shared publicly for the first time how the two of them prayed for a child during a trip to Israel soon after their marriage.<\/p>\n
\u2018We got back to the United States, and a little time later, we got pregnant,\u2019 DeSantis continued. \u2018But unfortunately, we lost that first baby.\u2019<\/p>\n
Haley also discussed the difficulties she had in getting pregnant.<\/p>\n
And Haley doubled down on comments on her stance on abortion that she made last week at the third Republican presidential debate, in which she urged Americans to find consensus when it comes to limiting abortions.<\/p>\n
Family Leader president and CEO Bob Vander Plaats noted that Haley\u2019s debate comments sounded \u2018pro-choice\u2019 to some evangelicals and asked the presidential candidate to \u2018assure them why that\u2019s not a pro-choice answer.\u2019<\/p>\n
Haley reiterated that she is \u2018unapologetically pro-life\u2019 and emphasized that \u2018our overall goal is how do we save as many babies as possible and support as many moms as we can.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018I think you can look at my entire record as governor. I fought for life whether it was a pain-capable bill, whether it was making sure that women had to wait to see an ultrasound before they made a decision,\u2019 said Haley said as she pointed to her two-terms steering South Carolina.<\/p>\n
And Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during former President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, touted that \u2018they said that I was the most pro-life ambassador they had ever had represent the U.S. at the United Nations because we did everything we could to make sure our taxpayer dollars never went towards anything that would take that life away or abortion.\u2019<\/p>\n
When Vander Plaats pressed Haley on whether she would have signed a six-week abortion bill into law when she was governor,\u2019 she quickly answered \u2018Yes. Whatever the people decide, you should do.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I think it\u2019s right to be in the hands of the people. I think that the people decided this was put in the states; that\u2019s where it should be. Everybody can give their voice to it.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nicole Schlinger, a longtime Iowa-based strategist with close ties to evangelicals, told Fox News that \u2018this was the answer that I think Iowans were waiting for from Amb. Haley on life issues\u2026 I think that was very positive.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Gov. DeSantis really came alive during the second half of this forum,\u2019 added Schlinger, who\u2019s neutral in the GOP presidential nomination race. \u2018This was a very pro-DeSantis crowd. He got the biggest applause.\u2019<\/p>\n
While Haley and DeSantis have repeatedly clashed in recent weeks as they battle for second place in the polls behind Trump, who remains the commanding front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, there were no fireworks on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the recent acrimony between Haley and Ramaswamy was also not evident at the forum.<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t want to know what is bad about the other person,\u2019 Vander Plaats, who moderated \u00a0the forum, said as he explained the ground rules. \u2018I want to have an adult conversation about the future of this country.\u2019<\/p>\n
Trump, who was invited to the forum, declined to attend. It was the second major presidential cattle call hosted by the Family Leader that Trump skipped this year. The former president will return to Iowa on Saturday, to headline a rally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The forum was briefly interrupted by a climate protester, who shouted, \u2018Repent! Repent!\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018How can you guys talk about being pro-life when our children\u2019s future is on fire? \u2018 the protester said before being escorted out of the hotel ballroom in downtown Des Moines where the event was held.<\/p>\n\n
DES MOINES, IOWA \u2013 They\u2019ve traded fire from behind podiums on the Republican presidential debate stage. But White House rivals Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy sat down together on Friday around the same table for a very different discussion in front of <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}