The Trail Less Traveled

NASHUA, N.H. — The voice that Fox News wouldn’t broadcast Sunday night came through loud and clear to the more than 400 Ron Paul fans who jammed into the Crowne Plaza hotel’s ballroom here Sunday afternoon to hear his alternative vision for America.

Paul, a Texas Republican in the House of Representatives and the closing speaker at the libertarian-oriented 2008 Liberty Forum, acknowledged that if elected president he might not be able to move as fast as some in the room might like.

If he could not immediately achieve the goal of abolishing the Federal Reserve, he said, he would seek to ensure that gold and silver could be used as currency. But he did pledge to immediately remove U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, Korea, Japan, Europe as well as other spots around the globe.

If elected, he said, “There’s nothing that says I have to enforce unconstitutional laws.”

The crowd, representing many of the outliers of the American political spectrum, waved placards and American flags as they repeatedly rose to their feet.

If nothing else, Paul’s backers, who include pro wrestler Glen Jacobs (aka “Kane”) and former Rep. Barry Goldwater Jr., are more overtly enthusiastic about their candidate than most political activists.

That energy could make Paul’s primary day performance here a compelling undercard for Tuesday’s marquee matchups of Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney .

Paul is within striking distance of finishing third. He has been within one point of Rudy Giuliani in several recent polls and was four points behind Mike Huckabee, within the margin of error, in a poll released Sunday that the University of New Hampshire conducted for CNN and WMUR.

Several rivals took shots at Paul’s platform during a debate Saturday night, particularly his contention that the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, “because we invade their countries and occupy their countries.”

“Ron’s analysis is really seriously flawed,” former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said. “There’s an Islamic, terrorism threat against us. It’s an existential threat. It has nothing to do with our foreign policy.” Thompson, who is in the low-single digits in New Hampshire polls, challenged Paul on monetary policy.

Fox News chose not to include Paul in its debate tonight, prompting the New Hampshire Republican Party to withdraw its support for the forum.

“It makes [Fox] look so foolish,” Paul said after his speech. “What do they have against democracy?”

But with $20 million banked in the last quarter of 2007, Paul hardly needs to finish well in New Hampshire to keep campaigning around the country. He has plenty of money to carry him through the primaries of Feb. 5, at which point voters in more than half the states will have cast their ballots.

“That’s probably a time for reassessment,” Paul said after his speech.

For now, Paul’s backers are focused on spreading his message before Tuesday’s vote.

Zara Miller, a 12-year-old from Chapel Hill, N.C., was fashioning homemade Paul signs. She won’t be able to vote in a presidential election until 2016, but she said she hopes she can influence others to cast their ballots for the Texas congressman.

Paul’s eclectic set of followers includes fellow critics of the Iraq war, civil libertarians, anti-communists, conspiracy theorists and many others who find little to attract them to Democratic and Republican candidates who are considered to be more mainstream.

Lars Christiansen, a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, came equipped with a dossier describing the rise of the “Illuminati” and the “New World Order,” part of a conspiracy theory that highly placed government officials, and in many iterations wealthy Jews, are involved in an effort to take away Americans’ money and independence and impose global socialism. Paul, too, has taken aim at the “New World Order.”

In a speech just before Paul arrived, John McManus, the president of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, held up a copy of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and asked, “Do you know what you can find in here?”

“Hillary Clinton,” shouted a woman in the crowd.

“You can find the income tax and the Federal Reserve here,” McManus answered.

Wearing a bolo tie with a state seal at the collar and a “Gun Owners 4 Paul” button, Christiansen said keeping Paul out of Sunday’s debate is not “the New Hampshire way. The airwaves don’t belong to the media,” he said.

But the afternoon belonged to Paul — even if his revolution won’t be broadcast.