EXETER — Some 300 people piled into town hall Tuesday night to hear Republican candidate Ron Paul talk about living within our means, doing right by the U.S. Constitution, and reigning in American military power.

With bodies overflowing the seats into standing room and filling the balconies, Paul touched on some of his trademark issues in a state where he enjoy only moderate support.

“Every dollar government spends, you don’t get to spend,” he said. “Even when the government borrows, it’s at cost to you. Even when the government prints it, it’s a cost to you.”

In a lecture-like presentation on the gold standard and Austrian economics, Paul said when the economy gets distorted, “production is diminished and there’s not as many people to tax, so you live by borrowing.”

For economic growth to occur, debt must be paid off. “We have to live within our means, we have to pay down the debt,” Paul said, vowing to cut a trillion dollars from the U.S. budget, along with five government departments.

Paul said some get nervous about this proposal, but “the people who should really get nervous are those who are getting the bailouts.”

Paul, a 12-term U.S. representative who served in the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard and a physician who has reportedly delivered 4,000 babies, vows to veto any unbalanced budget sent to him by Congress. He also plans to audit the Federal Reserve, an institution that Paul supporters identify as society’s key economic bogeyman.

“We had the biggest and wealthiest middle class in the history of the world,” he said. “But now it’s shrinking and this has to be reversed.”

Paul railed into U.S. foreign policy, saying “we have 12,000 diplomats, why don’t we get up every day and go to work and practice a little diplomacy every once in a while?”

He said $1.4 trillion is spent overseas, and not much goes to national defense.

Not only did the country support Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for 40 years, it continues to support the Sharia law monarchy in Saudi Arabia, stirring up trouble of the kind that caused the U.S. to be attacked on 9/11, Paul said.

Paul said some will say this critique amounts to “blaming America.”

“It isn’t blaming America,” he said. “It’s blaming some bad policy from some bad politicians.”

Latin America is a region that has gotten little to no mention in the lead up to the Republican primaries. Not so for Dr. Paul: “I think it’s time we ought to forget about (Fidel) Castro and start trading with Cuba.”

How to pull it all off? Paul said all that’s needed is for elected representatives to do right by their oath to uphold the Constitution.

Born in 1935, Paul is the oldest mainstream candidate, although his support base consists largely of young Americans.

Phil Smith of Exeter, a marine biologist by trade, was one of the first loyalists to file into town hall. Smith has supported Paul since his run for the presidency three years ago.

“I think he has sound principals,” Smith said. “A lot of the (candidates) up there don’t really understand the economy, but if you listen to Ron Paul you realize he actually understands how America’s form of capitalism works.”

Smith, who is a federal employee, said the irony of supporting a small-government libertarian is not lost on him. Under a President Paul, he said he could lose his job. But no matter, he’d vote for him anyway.

Smith said if Paul doesn’t win the nomination, he will vote for a third party, but not Democrat or Republican.

Paul voter Lylah Fitzgerald, who came from the Boston area, defended him against charges of isolationism.

“It’s not that he doesn’t want us to talk or trade with other countries, it’s that he doesn’t want us to engage in aggressive warfare.”