The verbal sparring between Donald Trump and Ben Carson isn’t the typical feud between two top-tier presidential candidates.
It’s a heated battle for the evangelical voters who could help decide the next Republican contender for the White House.
Trump and Carson are both gunning hard for the white evangelicals who dominate the early contest states of Iowa and South Carolina. And their exchange over faith and personal beliefs this week could ultimately expose substantial vulnerabilities for both men, highlighting the evolution of their beliefs over the past few decades.
One of the most striking findings in CNN’s new poll this week was the close contest between Trump and Carson among white evangelical voters. As Carson gains, he is threatening to overtake Trump with that key voting bloc, notching the support of 28% of white evangelical voters to Trump’s 32% in the CNN/ORC poll released Thursday.
“Right now, Carson sees Trump as an obstacle to his winning Iowa. He’s built a strong following among some evangelicals in Iowa and sees a chance to build on that by taking on Trump,” said Republican strategist Kevin Madden, who worked for Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. “The moves by Carson and (Louisiana Gov. Bobby) Jindal to take a more direct approach signals that they see Trump’s appeal to these voters as a con, and a fraud. This is a push to expose Trump with values voters they need to come their way if they’re going to win in Iowa.”
Trump previously said he would not go after Carson because the retired John Hopkins neurosurgeon was a “good guy.” But the real estate magnate clearly took personal umbrage at Carson’s assertion to reporters in Anaheim on Wednesday that the main difference between them was that he did not “in any way deny my faith in God.”
Carson and his campaign aides claimed on Thursday that the doctor had not meant to make a personal attack on Trump. But it was a sharp pivot for the usually genial candidate, and a politically savvy strategy — aimed squarely at getting evangelical voters in those key primary states to focus on Trump’s past support for abortion, his multiple marriages and his knowledge of the Bible.
Trump told CNN’s Chris Cuomo Thursday that Carson had no knowledge of his beliefs: “Who is he to question my faith?… He doesn’t even know me,” said Trump, adding that he was “a believer — big league — in God and the Bible.”
Trump also said that his examination of Carson’s past showed “he wasn’t a big man of faith.”
“All of a sudden, he’s becoming this man of faith and he was heavy into the world of abortion,” Trump said.
He added that Carson, the first surgeon to separate conjoined twins, was an “OK doctor” with once “horrendous” views on abortion — an apparent reference to Carson’s medical research in the early 1990s on tissue from aborted fetuses.
Carson’s business manager Armstrong Williams parried back on Thursday that the retired neurosurgeon’s remarks on Trump’s faith had been misinterpreted—and that Carson, who will tour Ferguson, Missouri, on Friday, was merely talking about his own “faith in God, his humility and what drives him.”
But Williams also said on CNN that Trump was acting “almost like a schoolyard bully — that if you say something I don’t like, that I’m going to come after you and everything is on the table.”
Carson, for his part, told The Washington Post, that he wasn’t looking to get into a “gladiator fight” with Trump.
It may indeed end up being a battle between the two men for evangelical voters, who are among the most organized participants in the Iowa Caucuses. Unlike white Protestants and Catholics, the political muscle of white evangelicals has only increased in recent election cycles — forcing more moderate Republican candidates into a box on social issues like abortion and gay marriage if they want to clear the primary circuit.
The Pew Forum has found that while the white Protestant and white Catholic share of the electorate has declined since 2000, white evangelicals — who reliably favor Republicans — have held steady, comprising nearly a quarter of the electorate in 2012. Even more significant, Pew found they made up 32% of the electorate in Iowa in 2012, which was a jump from the 2008 and 2004 election cycles.
Before Carson questioned the authenticity of Trump’s faith on Wednesday, most of the attacks on Trump had been policy based. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has repeatedly blasted Trump as not being conservative — releasing an Instagram video showing him talking about his once “pro-choice” views.
Carson’s foray into the faith conversation this week took the debate in a more personal direction, but Craig Robinson, the former political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, said it may bring unwelcome attention to Carson’s fetal medical research, as well as his position on Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, which he said did not go far enough for evangelicals.
“Candidates either speak the same language as evangelical voters or they don’t — and caucus voters tend to have a way to figure that out over time,” said Robinson, founder and editor-in-chief of The Iowa Republican website.
He predicted that evangelical voters would abandon Trump, in part because they don’t know much about his past statements about abortion yet — and have yet to see them over and over again in paid television ads.
“We are still in the stage of discovery for voters… People are still kicking the tires. They like what they see, but they really haven’t done the research,” Robinson said.
With Carson, Robinson said, “ultimately I don’t think he satisfies those socially conservative voters either. The issue with the research that he’s done on aborted babies — when that is more well known and talked about — it’s going to be more of a deal breaker.”
Carson has defended his research, saying “the issue of fetal tissue has everything to do with how the tissue is acquired.”
“Killing babies and harvesting tissue for sale is very different than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it, which is exactly the source of the tissue used in our research,” he said in August.
Evangelicals may end up feeling more comfortable with longtime standbys like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee or even former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who won the 2012 Iowa Caucuses.
“Over time they always tend to drift back to their natural harbor — candidates who are with them on the issues and speak, and even think, like they do,” Robinson said.
But Carson has cleared the way for a new line of attack on Trump. Jindal tried to edge into the conversation Thursday by echoing Carson’s line with more direct language.
“Donald Trump is for Donald Trump. He believes in nothing other than himself,” Jindal said in an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, where he said Trump was an egomaniac and a narcissist.
Trump delivered perhaps the ultimate insult by refusing to respond: “I only respond to people that register more than 1% in the polls,” he said in a statement.