Manchester, N.H. — Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s web-bred legions made their own rules as they went on the attack against Fox News and GOP operatives (like pollster Frank Luntz, in video).
“You are ignoring America’s savior!” cried a young Ron Paul supporter in a confrontation topping a day of protests of Paul’s exclusion from a Fox presidential debate Sunday night. Paul, an antiwar and anti-taxation libertarian, has ranked third in some polls of Republican primary contenders in New Hampshire and ranked among the top fund-raisers.
His campaign has caught fire among disaffected outsiders acting as freelance organizers, through Internet chat rooms and meet-ups and list serves rather than through conventional party channels. In the days leading up to New Hampshire’s Jan. 8 primary, they’ve emerged from their laptops onto the streets in a boisterous, colorful and unpredictable swarm itching to battle it out with Fox News and Beltway insiders.
They’re everywhere in New Hampshire.
After Paul was barred from Fox’s debate among presidential candidates at St. Anselm’s College, he and his supporters found other ways to be heard. The candidate paid his way onto local airwaves. His unfettered supporters took to the streets, banging revolutionary drums and heckling national pundits with aggressive fervor.
Infiltrating a Pundit’s Lair
The capping confrontation occurred after the larger protest, when hundreds of Paulites stood at the town’s main intersection denouncing the “Faux News,” had dispersed. A core group remained outside the Merrimack restaurant, where GOP pollster Frank Luntz had been conducting a focus group on voters’ reaction to the evening’s FOX debate. His focus group decided Romney won.
One of Luntz’s subjects, however, was apparently a Paul supporter secretly taping the whole show. When Luntz left, he blasted Luntz for allegedly making negative remarks against Paul, and threatened: “I’m going to publish all of this on my Web site!”
Luntz charged the man with breaking the rules by recording the proceedings.
“I’m not part of the media. I have a Web site,” said the Paul supporter, who slipped away before the Independent could ask his name.
“You have a Web site,” echoed Luntz.
“Yeah, that’s not the media!” said the man. Others chimed in — “The Internet doesn’t count.”
Luntz charged the participant with subverting the poll. “Don’t you think you have a responsibility” to answer honestly to the questions? Luntz asked – or tried to, before he got cut off by raging Paulites.
Paul’s supporters had been yelling in the window and marching around the block during the taping of the show. Luntz called them “mean.”
“We’re mad because the Fourth Estate has been taken away from us,” a voice yelled out to Luntz.
“You are ignoring America’s savior!” cried a young man.
Connecticut Paul organizer Bryan Tracy (pictured in center of video) urged civility as Paul fanatics railed against Rupert Murdoch and bid Luntz farewell.
“I don’t owe you guys anything,” said Luntz as he escaped the mob. (Click on the play arrow to watch).
Fox Hunting
Earlier in the day, a crowd of diehard Paul fans gathered at St. Anselm to protest Paul’s exclusion.
“Elitist media pig dog!” a man yelled at a FOX News truck as it pulled onto campus. Fox invited candidates John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. Supporters argued Paul should’ve been included, especially since he beat Giuliani in the Iowa caucuses. The New Hampshire GOP agreed, and withdrew its co-sponsorship from the debate for that reason.
To make up for being snubbed, Paul’s campaign bought a hour of air time on the local TV station, M-CAM, and filmed a show in downtown Manchester. His supporters made their own news. A plane flew over Manchester with a banner that read: “Ron Paul Revolution.”
“This is becoming a story that other people are picking up,” said Paul volunteer Jim Forsythe, urging a gathering crowd outside MCAM to stay out of the street and under control.
A drummer in Revolutionary War getup led the cheers: “Ron Paul revolution/ Give us back our Constitution!” The drummer, who gave his name as only Eric, flew here from California to support the cause. “I just wish I had a fifer,” he said before returning to his drum.
Inside the MCAM studios, Paul answered questions on his core positions: He’d get out of Iraq “immediately,” trade freely with all countries, change the country’s monetary system to move back towards a gold standard, and end the nation’s “welfare state.”
Outside, his message was harder to control.
“Mob Rule”
Later that evening, a group of Paul supporters went over en masse to hassle a national TV reporter who was broadcasting a segment near the Raddison Hotel, a hub for the visiting media elite. They yelled about boycotting Fox and stripping its federal license.
Lorin Page, who came here from North Carolina to rally for Paul, stayed behind on the corner.
“I didn’t think it was a good idea,” said Page, “but it’s mob rule.”
Page (pictured) is one of hundreds of Paul supporters who’ve poured in from across the country for this make-or-break primary. He’s staying in a house with 22 other Paul supporters who came together through Operation Live Free or Die, a volunteer-driven effort that raised money to rent out temporary quarters for visiting Paul volunteers.
Despite all the fervor, Page maintained that supporters are mostly “sane” people rallying around common ideas: putting an end to “erosion of liberties” and excessive government spending.
The Paul campaign itself, while benefiting from the fervent support and record-breaking Internet fundraising, tries to distance itself from volunteers’ unconventional displays of Ron Paul love. “We can’t control them,” said Paul spokesman Jesse Benton.
Smoking a cigarette and looking on at a rally earlier in the day, Portsmouth business owner Christian Callahan marveled at how the grassroots supporters have propelled the maverick Texan congressman into a possible third-place finish in Tuesday’s crucial primary. Trevor Lyman, a non-voter who fell in love with Paul and organized his record-breaking “money bombs,” will be studied in political science textbooks for years to come, Callahan said.
“They don’t need the mainstream media,” Callahan said. “They’ve got the Internet.”