[Daniel McCarthy] Five years ago, no one, not even Congressman Paul, would have imagined that 21 percent of voters in a hotly contested Republican caucus would support the Texas congressman’s brand of antiwar, constitutional conservatism and libertarianism. Paul didn’t just improve on his 2008 showing last night, he’s brought his philosophy from an asterisk in the Republican Party of George W. Bush to as much as a fifth of the vote in the GOP of 2012; there’s a fair chance he’ll win 20 percent again, or close to it, in New Hampshire. ...

More significant than the overall percentage Paul claimed last night, however, is the 48 percent he won of the under-30 vote. This augurs more than just a change in the factional balance within the GOP. It’s suggestive of a generational realignment in American politics. The fact that many of these young people do not consider themselves Republican is very much the point: Paul’s detractors cite that as a reason to discount them, but what it really means is that the existing ideological configuration of U.S. politics doesn’t fit the rising generation. ...

There’s more at stake here than the future of the Republican Party, though. The style as well as substance of Ron Paul’s movement is radically different from the 1990s right, and the substance itself is different not only in terms of what Paul’s supporters want but what their priorities are. ...