Ron Paul supporters hold counter-convention

"I cannot vote for McCain," she said. "He doesn't vote for what he says he stands for."

Paul, the Libertarian nominee for president in 1988, said he did not plan to start or lead a third party; he wants his ideas to influence the Republican Party.

Asked at a news conference about whether he might cost McCain the election -- if Paul's voters boycott the Arizona senator -- Paul said he wasn't "worried a whole lot about that" because the policies of the two major-party candidates weren't that different.

He suggested that his supporters, who tend to be younger, would support Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, because they see him as more likely to withdraw from Iraq. But he said it was wrong to think Obama was any less "hawkish" than McCain.

Paul's speech capped a day of speeches from members of the broad, sometimes scattered, coalition that lined up behind his candidacy.

"If you like Ron Paul, you'll love the John Birch Society," said John McManus, president of the ultra-right-wing group, in a speech that railed against illegal immigration.

Grover Norquist, president of the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, criticized Republicans who declined to sign his group's written pledge to oppose any and all tax increases.

"Those Republican elected officials who vote for tax increases are rat heads in a Coke bottle: They damage the brand for everybody else," Norquist said.

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james.hohmann@latimes.com