Despite polls, Rand Paul plugs on with sober policy proposals

By NICK REID

Monitor staff

Last modified: 9/28/2015 8:11:01 AM

After a rapid-fire morning of campaigning, Rand Paul sat on a pub stool at New England College. But there was no bartender on duty, only reporters.



The pensive senator could have taken a break during the brief lull before he launched into a speech about federal marijuana policy and the hypocrisy of his Republican foes, but he chose not to. He offered the stool next to him for one-on-one interviews, as he sought to overcome other candidates’ bombastic sound bites with his sobering policy positions.



To make his way forward from the rear of the Republican field, he’ll need people to listen, thoughtfully.



“Celebrity is skewing the polls right now, and when the allure of celebrity wears off, and when people finally get to crunch time and say, ‘We need to pick somebody who’s going to be the commander in chief,’ I don’t think it’s going to be” Donald Trump, Paul said.



The billionaire businessman who’s leading in the polls said at the top of a CNN debate less than two weeks ago that Paul didn’t belong on the stage. Paul called it a “non sequitur” attack, showing the front-runner’s inability to take the criticism Paul had been offering about Trump’s ad hominem rhetoric.



But it was also the start of a debate in which Paul saw more screen time than three competitors with better poll numbers, a turn for the better after Paul was the least-shown candidate in the first primetime GOP debate.



Paul is the son of the longtime former congressman from Texas, Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2012. Ron Paul captured 23 percent of the vote when he placed second in the first-in-the-nation primary, a total the younger Paul hasn’t yet approached.



Rand Paul noted that the most recent New Hampshire poll found only 13 percent of respondents have definitely decided who they’re voting for; however, the University of New Hampshire survey also found just 3 percent were leaning toward him, down from 9 percent in June.



The gap between his father’s totals and his own is one he expects to make up when Trump loses steam, as many have predicted.



Unwavering, Paul began his sixth trip to New Hampshire as a candidate at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, with at least five scheduled events ahead of him.



He yawned in the dim of the college pub about 2 p.m. and admitted the dawn-till-dusk days of campaigning have left him under the weather and “a little tired.” But the New Hampshire primary, looming 3½ months away, is important to his campaign.



At a diner in Manchester on Friday morning, the ophthalmologist offered the 9- and 10-year-old sons of a state representative advice about eye safety, as they lobbied their mother for an upgrade from Nerf to airsoft guns.



His black Chevy Suburban stopped off at Dunkin’ Donuts in Hudson so Paul could pick up a small coffee and a couple of glazed donuts before visiting a shooting range, where the 5-foot-8 candidate posed for photos with a bachelor party, remarking how he always ensures his posture is tall. There, he picked up the endorsement of state Rep. J.R. Hoell of Dunbarton and fired a Sig Sauer MCX rifle and P320 pistol at targets, one of which depicted a zombie clown.



Rick Bishop, the owner of the range, said Paul’s shot grouping was the best of the presidential candidates who’d visited so far, including Mike Huckabee and Lindsey Graham.



But getting the type of star treatment enjoyed by candidates like Trump can still be a challenge.



The president of Salem’s chamber of commerce introduced Paul momentarily by his father’s name before the senator spoke and took questions at a restaurant there. The final question came from a pair of hecklers who presented him a trophy for “climate denial.”



Afterward, Paul stopped to take a stroll through a park in Salem, as he’s done at about a dozen locations in New Hampshire.



Speaking to a mostly student-age crowd in the Simon Center of New England College, Paul addressed marijuana and the justice system in a way that resonates with young people, said Shawn Gingery, the president of the college Republicans. Paul said the federal government shouldn’t interfere with states that have medical marijuana laws, for instance, and that the war on drugs disproportionately affects minorities.



Gingery said college students frequently ask candidates their thoughts on marijuana, and Paul’s willingness to address the issue mere seconds into his speech affirms his campaign’s claim that it has a powerful rapport with young people. More than 300 colleges representing 50 states have Students for Rand chapters, he said.



“We’re really going after the youth vote, and we think we have a natural propensity to be able to get that since I’ve been the leading opponent of the indiscriminate gathering of phone records” and a harsh critic of the war in Iraq, Paul said.



Edward Carr, a senior at John Stark High School in Weare, asked Paul to sign his copy of the Constitution after the New England College town hall. Paul agreed, without knowing Carr is a Bernie Sanders supporter, and put his signature next to that of “Senator Santa Claus,” as he referred to the Vermont Democrat.



At a Manchester diner, first thing in the morning, a group of voters primarily interested in liberty assembled. Many were already sold on Paul, but others were unsure about certain aspects of his policy.



Tom Franco of Manchester said he was attending his first campaign event in years to ask Paul specifically what two items he had on his personal agenda, akin to President Obama on health care. Franco said he’s fiscally conservative but more liberal on social questions and wanted to hear that Paul’s priorities would be tax reform and term limits – not social causes.



Franco also wondered whether Paul was too academic and caught up in the details, “too much of an introvert, maybe,” compared with previous presidents, including Ronald Reagan, who had something of an entertainer quality.



Inside the door of the diner, Karl Cooper of Manchester said he supports Paul because more than any other candidate Paul supports liberty. Cooper, who said he voted for Ron Paul’s Libertarian Party campaign in 1988, added that he felt Paul’s foreign policy would present the strongest Republican challenge to Hillary Clinton.



“What he’s decided is instead of trying to grab headlines and sound bites, he’s going to lay out coherent, logical, realistic and effective proposals, and eventually people are going to get tired of the other kind of campaigning,” Franco said.



A man who quickly came and went entered into an argument with Cooper, saying he prefers Ron Paul’s more aggressive anti-interventionist foreign policy. Cooper said that’s fine, but there’s no better option in the race for libertarian-leaning Republicans.



“Who are you going to support in the primary?” Cooper asked the man, who soon after walked away. “If you don’t have an alternative, to just sort of speak against Rand Paul is counterproductive.”







(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325 or nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickBReid.)





