(CNN) - Ron Paul said Thursday the recent spike in support for rival Rick Santorum was a result of dissatisfied Republicans, though he said the former Pennsylvania senator hardly qualified as a conservative alternative.
"I think there's a few Republicans that might not even vote Republican, and we have a lot of those that come to our rallies from the Democratic Party," Paul said on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."
"But I think it's a lack of enthusiasm for any of the other three. It's been around for a bit, but there's a bit of irony, though, for Santorum to be the one that's criticizing Mitt Romney as sort of being liberal. When we do the analysis and look at his voting record, he's not a moderate. He has voted for a lot of big government things."
Paul said the conservative momentum would come around to him eventually.
"Maybe the people are getting tired of it," Paul said. "Maybe they're tired of the bickering among themselves when they realize their positions are essentially the same. And of course, we're not on the top. We see ourselves growing in enthusiasm and our numbers keep growing, so hopefully the message will resonate and more will join us."
As for his absence from this week's Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Paul said his campaign decided to forgo attending to give his supporters a break.
"We have a lot of young people involved in our campaign," Paul said. "We asked a lot of them, and they're doing a lot of hard work, they do the phone calling and the door knocking, and all these things. People don't come there automatically, and our supporters, we've asked them to do other jobs, so we had decided that a couple months ago not to come to CPAC."
Paul said the government had overstepped with a new policy requiring employers – including religious institutions – to include coverage for contraception in their health insurance plans
"I don't like the mandates at all, and I think Obama has dug a hole for himself here, because he's trampling on religious conviction, but the political and economic and constitutional approach of government being involved in doing things like this is really where it starts."
