Paul’s Iowa return draws raucous crowd

DES MOINES, Iowa — Ron Paul returned to Iowa with a bang late Monday morning, delivering a revved-up speech to a packed and raucous crowd at the Marriott Hotel in Des Moines.

“If you get to chanting about ‘end the fed’ we won’t have any time for a speech,” Paul joked at the beginning of his remarks as he tried to settle his supporters down. “This crowd is amazing… this is almost like a real rally,” he marveled as his supporters whooped and cheered.

{mosads}Paul’s son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), warmed up the crowd and set expectations high for Tuesday’s Iowa caucus results. “We’re going to win Iowa tomorrow,” he predicted to loud cheers.

Polls show the Texas congressman is in a dead heat with Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.

The whistle-stop rally drew Paul’s usual rowdy crowd, including many young voters and college students, who packed into the ballroom. But interspersed with those wearing “I’m a stoner — and I vote” t-shirts and Iowa State University hoodies were older voters in flannel and sweatshirts from local high schools, indicating Paul has held on to at least some of supporters he’s wooed outside his original base.

Paul’s speech was frequently interrupted by applause, and both before and after his speech chants of “Ron Paul” broke out.

But while the event with hundreds of supporters was a success for Paul, his absence from the state over the last few days may have hurt his chances at winning the caucuses. He returned to Texas for New Year’s, ceding the news cycles to his opponents, many of whom attacked him.

“Ron Paul kind of took the weekend off,” said Craig Robinson, a former political director of the Iowa Republican Party, who attended the speech. “By being out of the state, he kind of lost media cycles those days. You can’t ignore Iowa, you can’t take a weekend off just because it’s a holiday.  You’ve got to be here to get the news coverage — there’s great news coverage here today but he could have had that yesterday.”

Robinson also said that while Paul will finish strong, his rowdy events may be a double-edged sword. “He did a lot of good early work with home-schoolers and those folks and I wonder if those people are starting to peel away,” he said. “When you come to an event like this, this is a great event but this is a Ron Paul crowd, this isn’t the Ron Paul that reached out to home-schoolers. I think that after a while they might feel like ‘maybe I don’t fit in.'”

The rally was the first stop of a bus tour Paul and his son began Monday.

Paul’s speech focused mostly on economic and civil liberty issues, and he avoided mention of Iran, an issue his opponents have used to frame him as a dangerous candidate, although he did call for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and slammed his opponents for wanting to create “mischief” overseas.

“You don’t have to worry about the choice if you choose another candidate, because the others represent the status quo, period,” he said, and said that federal spending would come down because young voters would rebel against deficit spending. “The next generation is here today. That is why we can change things today and bring back the traditions of American, which means liberty, peace and prosperity,” he closed. The faithful once again chanted his name.