Ron Paul 2012: Voters Explain How He Won Them Over

'Painfully, Very Slowly'

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One voter, James Kelley, said he supported Paul at first because he seemed like the only candidate who was serious about cutting taxes and spending. But as he researched Paul's platform, he found himself reconsidering his hawkish foreign-policy views.                                                                                             

"Before him, I was basically like, nuke the Middle East and get it over with," Kelley said. "I started hearing what he was saying, and painfully, very slowly, I was like, yeah, actually, it makes sense."

From listening to Paul, Kelley concluded that it was the United States' own interventionist foreign policy that posed the greatest threat to national security.

"Initially, it [non-interventionism] didn't make any sense, because you keep hearing about all these threats and risks," he said. "But pretty much every single conflict we've been in, we've somehow preceded it. We armed the mujahedeen to fight the Soviets, and then we fight them as the Taliban. We put [Fidel] Castro in power; we put Saddam Hussein in power."

For James Campbell, a veteran and a volunteer for Paul's New Hampshire campaign, the order was reversed: it was foreign policy that first attracted him to Paul, and he latched on to the economics later.

While deployed in Somalia in 1993, "I saw firsthand the resentment and the fear that happens when you go in there and use a standing army as the enforcer," Campbell said. He was shot, received a Purple Heart, and was then deployed once again, this time to Bosnia. Once he came home, he recalled, "I was kind of lost until I heard Ron Paul."

"I went in for the foreign policy, the non-interventionism," he said. "But from an economic standpoint, Ron Paul's plan is the only one that works."

A voter named Pat, who spent much of Tuesday holding Ron Paul signs outside a voting precinct in Manchester, had a similar experience, although he is not a veteran himself.

"Last year I had a friend of mine who was killed in Afghanistan, and it really made me rethink my stance on foreign wars," he said. "I was already on board with the domestic politics, cutting taxes, maximizing freedoms, but I didn't think about it the other way. I didn't think about what other people in other parts of the world think about U.S. troops, right or wrong, going over there.