So how was he? Pretty good. Got a big ovation when he came in. Mostly younger crowd mixed with older people, but this is a college campus, so the demographics aren't really a surprise. The speech was focused more on the spreading of ideas and how there's a revolution brewing. If he narrowed it down to anything specific, it was mostly the economy and foreign policy and hammering Kerry giving out foreign aid. Talked about the military and how he got more donations than the other GOP candidates, Bradley Manning, individual liberty and the slowly, but surely rejection of the U.S. dollar.
There was Q&A. There was a question on gay marriage and his response seemed to resonate: government should just stay out of marriage altogeter and people should have the freedom to do whatever they want, as long as they don't force it on anyone. One question dealt with involvement overseas and his response was short and to the point: Just come home.
If there was a highlight, one person talked about how every four years, there's an election between a moderate conservative and a liberal Democrat. The person asked if we'd ever get a true conservative and mentioned both Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. The second he mentioned Rubio's name, there was a cluster of boos to my right. So as minor as may be, there's a section of people, at least at GW, that seem to not like Rubio.
So all in all, good speech. I appreciate the lack of a teleprompter and the speech felt very genuine, but the constant um's and 'you know's' really do grow annoying. Paul's never been the best orator or public speaker, in my opinion, and things like that do irk me, regardless of whose saying it, but I still enjoyed it.