Republicans stake their claim as Christie stresses credentials at CPAC

The New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, is a “straight-out, unabashed pro-life candidate” who is contemplating a “hard, fighting campaign” against the “elites in Washington”, in order to free “the taxpayers of this country” from “the heavy foot of the federal government”.

If he runs for president in 2016, Christie seemed to be telling the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday, it will not be a candidacy so much as an insurgency.

And to the crowd at CPAC, an insurgency sounded good.

“Sometimes people need to be told to sit down and shut up,” Christie told his interviewer, the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, to swelling cheers in the 50,000-square-foot ballroom on the banks of the Potomac River. “Quite frankly, Laura, so much of that stuff being spewed, especially out of the White House – some of them should shut up.”

Christie’s interview did not draw the hearty whoops of support that greeted some of the juiciest lines from the speaker who followed him, Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard executive. “Now is the time to declare, without apology, that this is the greatest nation the world has ever known!” Fiorina said, bringing sections of the crowd to its feet.

The New Jersey governor’s outing did not, however, produce a moment in which the inconsistency of his support from the hard right broke into plain view. At CPAC, it seemed, that could count as a success.

It is a central political challenge for the Republican party that the conference billed as the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the United States is for prospective presidential candidates as much a hurdle as a rally. Candidates with the most potential national reach – and Christie has been mentioned among them – may find the least traction among the true believers who cross the country to attend.

An awkward performance in 2012 by Mitt Romney, who sought to assure a skeptical crowd that he was “severely conservative”, did not derail his bid for the Republican nomination. But neither did it create the kind of party excitement that might have helped carry him to the White House.

“Maybe he just wasn’t conservative enough for most people,” said Donna Garrett, a conference attendee from St Louis, Missouri. Her preferred candidate this year, she said, was Texas senator Ted Cruz, for his “refusal to bend” on issues such as healthcare and immigration.

“He stands his ground. He’s not inconsistent,” Garrett said. “He doesn’t flip-flop on issues based on popularity and criticism.”

While the next presidential election was the talk onstage and in the halls at the Gaylord Convention Center, Christie declined to handicap the emerging horse race, smirking when Ingraham challenged him on his poor performance in some polling.

“Is the election next week?” Christie said, before pointing to his success in gubernatorial elections in New Jersey. “Everybody said there was no way Chris Christie could win in 2009, then they said in 2013 we’ll kick him out. I won with 61%.”

As the wattage onstage grew, the crowd began to build beyond the hundred or so who restlessly circulated in the ballroom through the morning. A speech about caring for veterans by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa gave way to a ceremony in which the former marine officer Oliver North bestowed a posthumous award on the “American Sniper”, Chris Kyle. An appearance by Andrew Breitbart on twin video screens in an advertisement for his namesake media outfit drew a smattering of spontaneous applause.

By the time Christie took the stage, nearly every chair in the Potomac ballroom was taken. But not necessarily by Christie supporters.

Larry Reichert had traveled 1,400 miles from Hays, Kansas, to vote in the CPAC straw poll for Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon from Maryland. Reichert said he was inspired by Carson’s speech at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, in which he flayed President Barack Obama’s healthcare law with the president seated meters away.

“He’s not afraid,” said Reichert. “We’re going to lose freedom of speech if we’re afraid to say what we believe, simply because we’ll be called racist or we’ll be called something unspeakable. So that’s what I like about Dr Carson. He’s totally American, and speaks passionately about America.”

Pollsters have begun to gauge the relative strengths of the field in Iowa, where the first primary election in the country is traditionally held. A Quinnipiac poll of conservative voters in the state, published on Wednesday, showed strong interest in the Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, who was the first pick for 25% of respondents, twice as high as his nearest rival.

Linda Blythe of Alexandria, Virginia, said she was a provisional supporter of Walker – as long as he does not go along with immigration reform efforts, which Blythe called “the amnesty”.

“He will do what he said he will do, like he has done in his state of Wisconsin,” Blythe said. “But if he goes along with the amnesty, he does not have my vote. Right now it’s a little unclear what he wants to do. He doesn’t mention it too much.”