Simone WilsonRepublican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has the libertarian college kids going ga-ga for his firm anti-big government stance.
Whereas the clean, hopeful, Shepard-Fairey vetted Obama campaign was all the rage with Gen Y in 2008, Paul's more skeptical (even paranoid) approach is winning over young voters for 2013. Bringing Occupy Wall Street and Andrew Breitbart heads together, against all odds!
As evidenced by the crowd at UCLA's Straus Stadium last night:
Paul's campaign bloggers (at least we hope they're getting paid) estimate today that the crowd reached 10,000, although max cap at Straus Stadium is more around 6,000.
It was probably somewhere in the middle, judging by this amazing photo that @CrusaderMaximus Tweeted from the scene. Students apparently flocked to the stadium's outskirts, monkeying up into campus trees for a glimpse of Sir Paul (yes, we're going for the Beatlemania imagery, as did the Washington Times):
“lol overflow Ron Paul crowd climbs trees to get a look at UCLA last night”; Credit: @CrusaderMaximus via Twitter
If attendance surpassed 6,200 — the number of bodies at Paul's personal-record-setting Chico State event earlier this week — then UCLA is indeed the new record-holder.
Credit: GenerationSnooki.com
Democrat-Media-Complex conspiracy theorists questioned why the Los Angeles Times had no day-before coverage on Ron Paul's visit to UCLA.
On the other side, skeptics of the more mainstream Republican candidates have created a pretty hilarious graphic (see left) comparing the turnout at Strauss Stadium to a speech that frontrunner Mitt Romney gave at Ford Field in Michigan, his home state, last month.
And another Paul supporter at the Examiner notes that…
“… as Paul set a new attendance record (estimates have ranged form seven to ten thousand), the only mention of Paul on the Fox news site is 'Paul Increasingly Absent From Campaign.'”
Like we said — if you hate everybody, you'll love Ron Paul. Wonder if he'll see the same level of support from UC Berkeley students tonight? They are pretty good at tree-sitting.
[@simone_electra / swilson@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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