From Salon
By Michael Scherer

It’s about 8 o’clock on Saturday night, and Murphy’s Taproom is going nuts with flash bulbs and cheering. The guy dressed as Santa Claus, a Staten Island limo driver named Lou Barrett, is trying to tell me about his new Meetup group, “Reindeer for Ron Paul,” but the din of about a hundred soused Paul fans traps the words in his fake white beard. “Santa is Ron Paul’s elf,” he finally manages to tell me. “We want to give the gift of freedom this year.”

About 10 minutes earlier, Texas Rep. Paul, a lithe 72-year-old obstetrician running a quixotic Republican campaign for president, arrived at the bar with a wide-eyed state policeman in tow. You would have thought Bono had come to Murphy’s. Young and old crushed to the door, waved their arms and stood on chairs to get a glimpse of the man. A 21-year-old from Brooklyn, N.Y., Violet Zharov, presented the candidate with a layer cake she had purchased with her own money, inscribed in frosting: “You’re our hero. We love you Ron Paul.” A former door-to-door frozen meat salesman, Curtis Fenimore, 26, from Wilmington, N.C., began shouting out cheers. “Who you gonna call?” The crowd responded: “Ron Paul!”

Of the mass of supporters, only a handful worked for Paul’s nine-person New Hampshire campaign operation. The rest had traveled to Manchester, where the wind chill blows at 3 degrees Fahrenheit, at their own expense, through their own online organizations, determined to canvass the state for the only politician they believe can save the country from tyranny and financial ruin. Some, like Laura and Wesley Lounsburg, of Cane Beds, Ariz., brought their young children and rented a house so they can canvass nonstop through the Jan. 8 primary. Some, like Vijay Boyapati, a former engineer at Google in Washington state, quit their jobs to move here, so they could organize and raise money for the effort. Others, like Matthew Rammelkamp, a 23-year-old from Long Island, N.Y., have just come up for the weekend.

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