In final push, Ron Paul launches ‘whistlestop tour’ -- by air

Making up for lost time, Texas Rep. Ron Paul is touring South Carolina by plane Friday, making his last-minute pitch to primary voters.

The only current lawmaker remaining in the GOP presidential race, Paul took a break from his campaign earlier this week, returning to Washington to cast votes in Congress while his rivals stormed the Palmetto State in a final pre-primary push.

After addressing the Southern Republican Leadership Conference -- an event that Newt Gingrich chose to skip because the crowd was too small -- Paul kicked off his “whistlestop tour” with a speech to a small gathering of supporters and reporters at an airport hangar in North Charleston.

He stuck to his standard themes -- slicing the role of the federal government domestically and abroad -- and cast himself as a unique candidate in the four-man race.

“The rhetoric sometimes seems to be similar, but when you look into exactly what we’re talking about and what we’d like to do, we know it is significantly different from what the others are talking about,” he said. “For instance, we take the Constitution very seriously.”

It was a small crowd -- no more than 50 supporters -- which is unusual for Paul, who has an energized base of grass-roots loyalists, many of whom are younger voters. But there was another character in the GOP race who was in the area Friday morning, satirist Stephen Colbert, whose rally in Charleston probably drew some young people away from the Paul event.

Paul finished third in the Iowa caucuses and second in the New Hampshire primary and is on track to place a distant third in Saturday’s first-in-the-South primary. But as the rest of the field consolidates around front-runner Mitt Romney and a not-Romney alternative, Paul’s candidacy is fated to become something of a side show.

Paul was clearly irritated last night as he was often overlooked or ignored during the CNN debate. But to supporters this morning, he kept his tone upbeat.

“Quite frankly, I feel pretty good about last night,” he said.

“We have been very encouraged,” he said. “A lot of people do identify me with another generation, the younger generation who’s so enthusiastic about the things that we’ve been talking about. This to me is very encouraging because the growth of the freedom movement is getting to be exponential.”

Paul said the South Carolina primary is “a very significant election,” and urged his supporters to keep up the effort.

“I think we should stay optimistic,” he said. “Do whatever you can to get some votes out for tomorrow night.”

Paul will make stops in Myrtle Beach, Florence, Aiken and Greenville before ending the day with a rally in Columbia, the state capital.