Paul appeals to young voters with focus on domestic bread and butter economics

Yesterday's debate was the first equal opportunity one of the GOP primary cycle. By that I mean that each of the four remaining Republican presidential candidates (Romney, Paul, Santorum and Gingrich) essentially shared the microphone. The candidates all spoke roughly the same amount of time and garnered similar decibels of applause.

The CNN forum was full of fireworks, probably the most confrontational, exciting and topically wide-ranging debate thus far and one in which the candidates lost most of their inhibitions.

How does this all fare for the youth vote? You're right, Wes: If young people are going to catapult a non-Romney GOP alternative to frontrunner status, at the current rate, it most likely won't be Newt Gingrich, even if he pulls a victory in S.C. 1) He is too aligned with conventional party politics. 2) He has failed to connect his "big ideas" to college students, specifically. 3) As a former college teacher, he has failed to capture vigorous grassroots support from millennials in the first contests.

But S.C. may soon become a four-way dead heat in the polls. If Gingrich wins the state, surging momentum will not be enough to secure top spot on the ticket. In order to win the nomination, he will have to win over the hearts and minds of GOP youth in a way he has yet to do. Beyond retuning his image as the sometimes erratic, egocentric and cry baby professor estranged from the student body, I'm not sure there's much he could do, at this point, to win over Ron Paul's dedicated twenty-something followers. The same is true of Mitt Romney, who was the victim of audible boos last night...after the crowd appeared fed up with his con artistry (in the eyes of Republicans who believe Romney is a Democrat in Republican's clothes).

Entering the South Carolina primary, I wonder if the youth turnout in the first south-of-the-nation contest will return to '08 levels. That may depend on the extent to which the S.C. primary electorate, particularly young people, believe the field is open and Romney is not the presumed nominee.

For if you are to believe the Paul hype, the 76-year-old will galvanize a record percent of the 18-30 demographic at the polls over the weekend. One S.C. student tells BBC News: "He will save our generation from debt," he says. "He straight up says if we don't cut our debt, cut our bases, bring our troops back, our generation will have no money, we'll end up paying all the debt back."

Wes: Based on the continued media reports of his zealous loyalists and the six reasons, as Forbes reports, young people separate Paul from the pack (gravitating toward his cult-like rebel persona - his promise to abandon foreign entanglements and to instead focus on domestic bread and butter economics instead), why should we not expect a record youth turnout in S.C.? 

(Perhaps the answer is that Paul is unable to truly channel the reform movement as a Republican, and he does not want to launch a third-party insurgent candidacy.) His campaign manager recently suggested to ABC News that if his candidate falls short in the GOP delegate count, he will try to influence the party platform rather than run in another party: "If the campaign comes up short at the convention, Benton [Paul's campaign manager] says the plan is to use all the delegates awarded to Paul as a bargaining chip to force the Republican Party to stick to its limited government platform.")