WASHINGTON - At 76, Ron Paul is the oldest of the Republican presidential candidates. And yet he's making a bigger connection with young voters than any of his rivals for the nomination.
Paul's stance on America's so-called war on drugs, in particular, has earned him an avid following among young fans who have nicknamed him Ronstoppable. Those under 30 not only form a broad chunk of his loyal supporters, but they are among some of his most passionate campaign workers, including a 23-year-old college student who's put her studies on hold to run his Midwest operation.
The Texas libertarian's comments on the futility of the so-called war on drugs in the latest Republican presidential debate on Tuesday night is the type of messaging that resonates with youth, as does his bashing of two overseas wars he says are needless, monstrously expensive and a major threat to civil liberties.
"The federal war on drugs is a total failure," Paul said to applause from the crowd in Washington.
"The drug war is out of control .... We spent over the last 40 years a trillion dollars on this war and, believe me, the kids can still get the drugs. It just hasn't worked."
He also questioned why some drugs were illegal when alcohol and prescription drugs are not.
"Why don't we handle the drugs like we handle alcohol?" he asked, saying such a strategy would ease urban crime, lessen incarceration rates and decrease violence at the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Alcohol is a deadly drug. The real deadly drugs are the prescription drugs — they kill a lot more people that the illegal drugs."
Medical marijuana should be made readily available to the chronically ill, he added. And he also threw his support behind the Occupy Wall Street protesters, many of them disgruntled youth.
"I've been condemning that one per cent because they've been ripping us off," Paul said earlier in the week. "The people on Wall Street got the bailouts and you guys got stuck with the bills and I think that's where the problem is."
Paul's even winning fans north of the border, where some have warmed to his anti-war message, in particular.
"He's one of the few politicians — even in Congress, no less running for president — who's speaking plainly about war," said John C. A. Manley, a 33-year-old copy writer in Stratford, Ont., who's a big Paul fan.
"He asks very sensible questions, like: 'Why are we in Libya? What did Libya do to us?' Those are questions Canadians are asking too."
Tomasz Dybowski, a Toronto poet who is working to spread the word about Paul via Twitter and the DailyPaul.com website, says the congressman resonates with youth because he has their interests at heart.
"They can see his honesty and integrity," said Dybowski, 44, who distributed leaflets about Paul at the recent Occupy Toronto protests. "He is everything young people expected Obama to be before most people realized that Obama was another puppet of Wall Street and the military machine."
A new video posted recently by Paul's campaign features two young phone bank volunteers, identified only as Ann and Kirby, making the case for the longtime congressman as the camera pans over several 20-somethings making calls to potential supporters.
"Anybody under 70 who's not making a phone call on his behalf is a punk," Ann says.
Ann adds she even makes calls to potential voters during her lunch break, and marvels at Paul's stamina: "Fricking going across the country, like, do you know how hard that is? And he's killing it."
But will his loyal support from young voters mean anything in the primaries?
A recent Bloomberg News poll suggests that Paul is surging in the key primary state of Iowa, challenging the Republican frontrunners. The survey found him in a four-way statistical tie for first place among Iowa Republicans with 20 per cent for Herman Cain, 19 per cent for Paul, 18 per cent for Mitt Romney and 17 per cent for Newt Gingrich.
An Iowa State-Gazette-KCRG poll, meantime, showed Cain leading with 25 per cent and Paul in second place with 20 per cent.
Youth enthusiasm for Paul is growing, even among the under-16 set, if a recent poll of pre-teen New Hampshire pupils is any indication.
The Texas congressman took first place in the Kids Primary, an unscientific survey of 250 fifth- and sixth-graders at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. Mitt Romney, the current frontrunner in the Granite State, came in fourth behind Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain for the Republicans.
The kids had the option of voting Democrat, but only 39 of them chose to cast their ballot for Obama, whose popularity with young voters in 2008 helped propel him to historic victory. Have they forsaken the urban, youthful Obama in favour of a diminutive elderly man old enough to be their grandfather?
Could be a growing trend, predicts Manley.
"Young people trust him because he talks straight, he doesn't talk in circles, and they can understand him," he says.
"He also seems to be the only one who's critical of the massive debt and the wars because he knows young people are going to be the generation that pays for them. He seems to truly be looking out for them in the way other candidates aren't."
© The Canadian Press, 2011