Presidential hopefuls in town at GOP conference

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- There's a meeting in town today for the Republican leadership, and that brought presidential hopefuls to our area to make their pitch to their fellow party members.

All the GOP hopefuls speaking here were trying to show the influential party leaders how tough they can be on President Obama and his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"We need a Republican president who's going to be strong and resolute and talk truth to the American people and to the congress," said New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Christie attended a lunch gathering, and when he spoke he sounded more and more like a candidate for the White House. But the New Jersey governor continued to dance right up to the line of a formal announcement, but not go all the way.

The forum, the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference has seen lot of GOP presidential hopefuls pass through.

Christie threw the conservative crowd the standard red meat, hammering Obama's foreign policy as weak - everywhere from Europe to China to the Middle East.

He told the crowd, "You see Iraq is in disarray and on fire. You see that Libya is in disarray and on fire. You see that Syria is in disarray and on fire. Egypt is under marshal law."

Christie outlined various domestic policy reform plans, but mentioned nothing about the South Carolina church massacre.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was slated to speak today, but cancelled to go home to deal with that crisis.

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was a headliner at the conference. He too did not comment during his speech about the apparent racially motivated mass murder spree in Charleston. He's concentrating for now on appealing to blue collar voters in his second run for the White House.

Santorum told Action News, "There are a whole bunch of voters that frankly Republican candidates aren't talking to. And you look at the last election, we had a lot of blue collar workers stay home because they don't think either party frankly has anything to say to them."

The GOP field now stands at 12 and growing - unprecedented and full of early quicksand warns polling expert Terry Madonna.

Madonna tells us, "The field could grow to 15. Now imagine the voters out there in the Republican caucuses and primaries trying to figure out between 12 and 15 people. Even the debates, the structure and format of the debates are controversial simply because there are so many candidates."

The GOP conference wraps up Saturday with a sales pitch by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.