Google Ron Paul
Seems that the "Google Ron Paul" signs seen popping up all over Cincinnati on highway overpasses and in front yards have made an impact on at least one demographic: Xavier University students.
Matthew Finger, managing editor of Xavier's "News Wire," the student-run newspaper, is one of four students who have chosen to work on the Republican Texas Congressman and past Libertarian Party presidential candidate's Iowa caucus campaign.
A registered Democrat from Rhode Island, Finger said he got interested in Ron Paul when flipping channels one day and caught the candidate on a debate. Paul was discussing foreign affairs, particularly the United States' involvement in Iraq, saying that the war had actually grown terrorism and anti-U.S. sentiment around the world, not reduced it.
"He was the only one on stage that was saying anything about it," Finger said. "Everyone was saying we need to stay and fight, but never got to the reasons why."
Finger, 21, said those sentiments echoed the same things he learned in a recent college class at Xavier about world affairs. He said what he learned made sense, but he had not heard any of the candidates talking about the issue in the same way.
"He basically had the same information that I had, but I didn't know that someone else knew the same information that I know," Finger said.
Finger was heard on the tour bus that brought the students to Iowa several times encouraging his classmates to "join the revolution," a phrase that has come to describe the grassroots, viral nature of the Paul campaign.
Maggie Nafziger, Hamilton County Republican Party executive director, also on the Xavier trip, said that Paul's campaign is gaining popularity.
"It's almost becoming fashionable" to support him, she said.
Finger, a senior classman, said he may switch parties in the general election, now less than a year away in November 2008.
"I'm finding myself more and more of a conservative as of late," he said.