MANCHESTER, N.H. — Andrew Blanchard fronts a band, 9th State Madmen, named for New Hampshire’s place as the ninth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Blanchard has little use for politics, but he likes to write songs about being free to do what he wants. (His most recent tunes are on the group’s debut recording, “World Gone Crazy.”) Blanchard has voted for president in the past, but never for an actual candidate; unhappy with his choices in 2008, he wrote in the name of his grandfather, Walter Dwinnells, of nearby Hopkinton, N.H. Alas, Dwinnells didn’t win.
But on primary day in New Hampshire, Blanchard happily cast a vote for a real candidate: Ron Paul. “I can look at a politician and finally say he’s honest,” said Blanchard, who had come to the Executive Court center in Manchester for Paul’s election-night party. “I hate to be political, because I don’t like politics, but I do like freedom.”
On Tuesday night, the political world discovered that a lot of people like Ron Paul in New Hampshire. Paul finished in second place, with 23 percent of the vote — 16 points behind winner Mitt Romney, but seven points ahead of third-place finisher Jon Huntsman, and 13 points ahead of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. After a third-place finish in Iowa, Paul has the second-best record in GOP voting so far.
Paul’s New Hampshire results were by any reckoning a solid showing; when Bill Clinton did about as well in the 1992 Democratic primary, he was dubbed the “Comeback Kid” and launched on his way to his party’s nomination. Despite his strength, though, Paul continues to suffer from under-coverage in some corners of the media. On Wednesday morning, for example, all three broadcast network news programs interviewed Romney, while just one talked to Paul. There’s little doubt he would receive more coverage if the press viewed him as a mainstream Republican.
Of course, the reason his supporters like him is that Paul is not a mainstream Republican. “I came from the Left,” said J.B. Webb, a carpenter from Manchester waiting for Paul to take the stage. Dressed in all black with a platinum-blond-dyed crew cut, nursing a Sam Adams and a smokeless cigarette, she continued: “I started out with Dukakis and always voted for Democrats. Then I started learning about monetary policy in 2006, and it led me to Ron Paul. I kept hearing about the Federal Reserve system. The antiwar issue really got me going, too.”
Finally, in 2008, she voted for Paul. “It was the first time I ever voted for a Republican in my life,” she said. “My Democratic friends laughed at me.” Now, four years later, Webb feels perfectly at home among the crowd chanting END THE FED! END THE FED!
If the New Hampshire exit polls had measured which voters would like to abolish the Federal Reserve, Paul would have won a unanimous decision. But the surveys measured a number of other factors that suggest just how eclectic Paul’s New Hampshire coalition was.
Paul won the votes of people 18 to 29 years old by a substantial margin — 47 percent to Romney’s 25 percent. Paul also won among unmarried voters, among voters who made less than $30,000 a year, among independents, among people who had never before voted in a Republican primary, among people who called themselves “somewhat liberal,” among people with “very liberal” views on social issues, including abortion (Paul is strongly pro-life), among people who said they had no religious affiliation, among people who said they were looking for a “true conservative” candidate; and among people who said the most important quality in a candidate should be “strong moral character.”
Perhaps most importantly, Paul finished second when exit pollsters asked voters whether they would be satisfied if a particular candidate became the nominee. Sixty-one percent said they would be satisfied if Romney wins. Forty-two percent said they would be satisfied if Paul wins the nomination — more than Santorum (38%) or Gingrich (35%). While not enough to win, that is a significant level of acceptance.
Paul’s supporters come from three main camps: People who want to end the Fed and re-make the monetary system; people who want to bring American troops home from most, if not all, foreign assignments; and people who just want to be free to do whatever they want.
“I want to wake up in a free world,” said Joan Bastek, of Manchester.
“I’m tired of the wars,” said Andre Rosa of Manchester. “I want us all to come home.”
“It’s very simple: free minds and free markets,” said Chandler Gabel, of Bedford.
Those sentiments have led Paul’s supporters in a lot of different electoral directions in the course of their lives. As people waited for Paul to speak, and music blasted through the room — RON PAUL! SAVE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS! RON PAUL! WE’RE NOT GOING TO GIVE UP THE FIGHT! — I asked supporters how they voted in the last election. In addition to Andrew Blanchard’s vote for his grandfather, of 15 people I talked to, one voted for Obama (and now regrets it); one voted for John McCain (and now regrets it); one voted for Alan Keyes (and doesn’t regret it); one voted for Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin; three did not vote at all; and eight voted for Paul.
This election night party is a time for Paul’s early New Hampshire volunteers to look back with a lot of satisfaction. Of course they fantasized about winning, but in reality few thought at the beginning that Paul would rise so high. When Paul came onstage, he was clearly delighted. Mitt Romney won the primary, he said, “But there was another victory tonight. He had a victory, but we have had a victory for the cause of liberty.”
Even at an election-night celebration, Paul can lose himself in esoteric musings. “Throughout all of history, monetary policy on periodic occasions will become the dominant issue,” he says, beginning one digression. But on primary night he made his case as concisely as he can: “If you are a true humanitarian,” he said, “You have to fight and argue the case for free markets, sound money, property rights, contract rights, no use of force, and a sensible foreign policy so we don’t waste our resources.”
“We’ve taken liberty and chopped it up into pieces,” Paul said. “I think what we need to do is make the emphasis that liberty means you have a right to your life and your privacy and the way you want to live your life, as long as you don’t hurt people, and you have a right to keep and spend your money as you want to.”
A long cheer. “Freedom is popular, don’t you know,” Paul said happily.
Paul has survived a pretty intense attack from Republicans, many of whom mostly oppose his foreign policy, who accused him of making racist comments in a newsletter back in the ’80s and ’90s. He seems past that now, and his supporters seem unfazed. But he is also facing what could be a tough few weeks in upcoming Republican contests.
South Carolina, which votes on January 21, is not Ron Paul country. While there’s no doubt a lot of conservative Republicans are open to his message of cutting federal spending, they’ve also been war supporters and are not as open to what critics call Paul’s “isolationism” and what Paul calls “non-interventionism.” The RealClearPolitics average of polls in South Carolina shows Paul in fourth place, 20 points behind Romney and also trailing Santorum and Gingrich.
As for Florida, it’s unclear how much effort Paul plans to make there; whatever he does, he will be start from a position far back in the polls.
Still, there are plenty of states where Paul will be able to compete, and his loyal followers and contributors can keep a lean campaign going for a long time, perhaps far longer than Gingrich, Santorum, and Perry. He could go into next summer’s Republican National Convention in Tampa with a significant amount of support — and a real voice in the party.
That could be why a number of figures in conservative circles are making a new effort to take Paul seriously. On the morning after the primary, radio host Laura Ingraham asked South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint how the GOP should view Paul. “It’s easy for neo-conservatives especially to kind of just dismiss him and kind of make fun of his positions and he’s a nut and all this,” Ingraham said. “But do you think there are lessons for the Republican Party in the rise of Ron Paul?”
“I’m glad you asked about that,” DeMint responded, “because I think one of the things that have hurt the so-called conservative alternative is saying derogatory things about Ron Paul. I don’t agree with him on everything, but he is right about the out-of-control and unaccountable Federal Reserve. He is right about the need for limited constitutional government and the importance of individual liberty…You don’t have to agree with him on everything he’s saying, but if the other candidates miss the wisdom in what he’s been saying on monetary policy and limited government, then I think we will see it’s to their detriment, because the twenty percent or twenty-five percent or so who are supporting him are people that we need in the Republican Party.”
That could be a big job. It’s an open question whether DeMint could ever coax Andrew Blanchard, the frontman of 9th State Madmen, into the GOP, at least until Blanchard comes to like politics a little more. But Paul’s support is wider than his critics would like to believe, and he could be in the presidential race for a long time to come.
