There were cheers and jeers for all the candidates at the Red State Gathering, an annual conservative conference in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday. The jeers were meaningful and the cheers, well, they just were a sign of entertainment.
Conservative activists responded as one might expect while watching the first GOP debate of 2016.
Donald Trump drew oohs and aahs for all of his one-liners and braggadocio, while more centrist candidates like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich drew scepticism and a fair number of boos in the crowded hotel ballroom during Thursday night’s debate.
But while the doubts stuck to more moderate Republican candidates, in their own way they stuck to the Donald as well.
Martha Moore, who came to the event from Boerne, Texas, said that while she thought Trump was “saying a lot of things that need to be said”, she didn’t trust his conservative bona fides. “I can’t really imagine us voting for him.”
Her husband Pat was more of a Trump fan, however. He liked the real estate mogul because “he doesn’t back down”. But he had real concerns about Trump’s past support for “single-payer healthcare and other liberal things”.
In contrast, the scepticism towards nominally more establishment candidates seemed universal. While only one attendee, Renee Cobb of Atlanta, expressed the slightest interest in Christie, neither Bush nor Kasich found fertile ground. Bush seemed to draw disdain for his family name, while Kasich was still too obscure for most to form a concrete opinion.
While the event seemed like a generic gathering of conservatives, there were clear signs of storm clouds gathering for Democrats.
Perhaps the ultimate nightmare for the left was personified by a Trump fan named Pam Alayon. A Puerto-Rican American mother from Atlanta, Alayon had never voted but became engaged in politics by Trump’s candidacy. She had always thought all politicians were equally corrupt. In her mind, Trump was different: “He doesn’t give a shit.”
But after watching the debate, she had become far more sceptical about Trump’s candidacy.
“He kept on repeating the same things,” she said. Instead, she was far more intrigued by Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. She felt they had more polish and answered questions in more appropriate ways.
And even if some of the attraction of Trump had worn away, his candidacy had ensured she would vote for the first time in her life this year. He had been the political version of “a gateway drug”.
