If Wednesday's Republican presidential primary debate, the first in which Texas Governor Rick Perry will participate, is a test for all the candidates, the forum that will take place in South Carolina two days prior is a minefield.
At the event, called the Palmetto Freedom Forum, Perry and the other leading candidates will each sit alone onstage for 21 minutes to face questions from conservative firebrands Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). They will be pressed on their allegiance to the tenets of conservative orthodoxy, and each will likely face a higher level of scrutiny than they would in a group setting. But that isn't the reason their campaigns may be dreading the event.
DeMint will quiz the candidates on ways to make the government smaller, while King, according to one source, will focus on immigration. But the sleeper threat will be the third panelist asking questions Monday in Columbia: Robert George, a Princeton professor who chairs the National Organization for Marriage.
George, a 56-year old constitutional scholar who leads a new vanguard of conservative culture warriors, will force each of the candidates to articulate, in detail, where they stand on both constitutional issues and also on some of the most touchy social issues of the day, pressing them when their answers are not specific or substantive enough.
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Complete article at Huffington Post : http://huff.to/rlIvwm
