Three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul and his supporters may be locked out of the main stage at this week’s Republican National Convention, but they won’t go quietly.

Paul, the libertarian Texas Congressman who is retiring at the end of the year, told thousands of supporters that better times are coming for their cause, according to the Boston Globe.

“Believe me, we will get in the tent because we will become the tent,’’ Paul said at the rally, the Globe reported.

Among the most popular speakers at the rally held on the University of South Florida campus, located several miles from the main Tampa convention site, was Michigan U.S. Rep. Justin Amash.

Amash, a first-term lawmaker from Cascade Township, is frequently identified as “the next Ron Paul,” and has a growing following from the group. Amash faces a re-election test from former judge, state representative and businessman Steve Pestka in the Third Congressional District.

Amash drew roars from the crowd with his condemnation of the National Defense Authorization Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama. It codifies the government’s right to detain without trial terrorist suspects. Amash was one of two House Republicans who tried unsuccessfully to amend the bill by extending due process to anyone arrested on American soil.

"There is no next Ron Paul," Amash said, according to the Globe. "No one can replace Ron Paul. . . . We are all champions of this liberty movement."



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Paul’s gatherings are a motley array of libertarians, with strict constitutionalists, veterans, fiscal conservatives, and young people. He is viewed with deep skepticism in many quarters of the Republican Party because his beliefs, particularly his noninterventionist foreign policy and support for drug decriminalization, fall well outside the mainstream of party orthodoxy.

Paul was relegated to his hold his own rally after not being included in the GOP’s convention. Delegates he won in several states are also not being seated by the party.



Related: Read the full story from the Boston Globe here.

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