As loud music abruptly forced Carly Fiorina off stage, midway through a passionate speech about why women presidential candidates deserved to be taken more seriously, it became clear there were going to be no obvious winners at the Iowa Republican party's Lincoln Dinner.

The former Hewlett-Packard chief executive fell victim to a brutal format designed to unceremoniously squeeze almost a dozen national politicians in between cocktails and chocolate cake without anyone falling asleep.

Each had less than 10 minutes to make their case for why the star-struck party activists of Des Moines should nominate them in January. But the swift punishment meted out to Fiorina when she slipped a minute or two over schedule served to remind those that followed that this was not an audience to be trifled with.