By Scott Conroy - April 7, 2011

When he ran for president in 2008, Ron Paul boasted several hallmarks of a top-tier Republican candidate: intense grassroots support, eye-popping fundraising prowess and a compelling message. Yet, he was a House member from Texas who had never won statewide, and after receiving relatively scant media attention, Paul did not break the double-digit threshold in any of the first three critical voting states: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

In a primary fight in which every other significant GOP presidential candidate supported the Iraq war, Paul often served as a punching bag on the debate stage, and even his brand of libertarian-style conservatism on fiscal issues was lampooned by his rivals as being far outside of the Republican mainstream.

But that was then and this is now. As the 2012 presidential primary season gathers momentum, Iraq is no longer a major source of intra-party tension and even Republican hawks are jittery about the U.S. military's involvement in yet a third Islamic nation. Most significantly for Ron Paul, some of his most dire predictions about the economy came true -- and the tea party movement has emerged as perhaps the most powerful electoral force within the Republican Party.

So he is considering giving it another shot. It would be his third run for the presidency, but this time around, his throngs of supporters believe his campaign figures to be far more than a sideshow.

"A lot has happened since 2007, 2008," said Jared Chicoine, who ran Paul's 2008 New Hampshire campaign. "Remember, the presidential primary last time was really pre-recession. It wasn't until the summer of 2008 that things really got out of hand, and I think there is renewed interest amongst Republican activists on the issue of the Fed and why we have these boom and bust periods."

Paul said in an interview on the Alex Jones Show on Tuesday that he would participate in the first GOP presidential debate scheduled for May 5 in Greenville, South Carolina, and would make his final decision about whether to run within a month. He has already been making visits to the early voting states and will visit Iowa again on Monday before heading to New Hampshire later in the week.

Paul's advocacy group and political action committee raised a combined $3 million in the first quarter of 2011, and although only about $1 million of that could be transferred to a presidential campaign, his impressive haul shows his potential to be a significant player in presidential politics.

"He certainly has a niche and that niche might be bigger this time," said Iowa Tea Party Chairman Ryan Rhodes. "There's a lot of credit that can go to him for bringing these principles to the forefront."

The small-government advocacy group that Paul formed in 2008, Campaign for Liberty, remains an active and compelling force in grassroots Republican circles and would serve as the foundation for a 2012 Paul run.

"Since the last campaign for president ended, people who are passionate about the principles Ron Paul ran on have stayed involved promoting those principles through the Republican Party, all as volunteers," said Campaign for Liberty's Iowa Cochairman David Fischer. "We've kept the fire going here in Iowa to keep these principles in the foreground, so there will be a natural home for a Paul campaign."

Still, Paul came in a dismal eighth place in a recent Neighborhood Research (R) survey of likely Republican Iowa caucus-goers and only managed a slightly more respectable fifth-place showing in a survey of New Hampshire Republican primary voters conducted by the Democratically affiliated Public Policy Polling.

Paul will turn 76 in August, and there is a sense among some Republican voters that his chance has already come and gone. New Hampshire Liberty Caucus Chairman Andrew Hemingway said that while Rep. Paul continues to enjoy significant grassroots enthusiasm in the first-in-the-nation primary state, it is another libertarian-leaning candidate who would be better positioned to become a formidable contender.

"Tea party people here are more excited about Rand Paul than they are about Ron Paul," Hemingway said.

The freshman senator may only have been in national office for less than three months, but Rand Paul's hard-fought 2010 primary and general election campaigns provided him with instant recognition, and perhaps, a legitimate chance to compete for a substantial slice of the Republican primary electorate.

Sen. Paul has said that he will not run if his father does -- a likely possibility, according to Rand's estimation -- but that did not stop the Kentucky senator from visiting Iowa last weekend. While there, Rand Paul held private meetings with party officials in the state and made the case publicly that his relative lack of experience would not be a major hindrance, noting that it had not hurt President Obama during his 2008 campaign.

"I think it's interesting people want to complain about it, but, you know, Lincoln was elected with two years of experience as a congressman 15 years before he ran for president," Rand Paul told Radio Iowa.

Whereas his father has his decades in Washington and extensive record as a small-government purist to tout, Rand Paul would bring his own advantages to the table, including an aura of freshness and a warmer relationship with the Republican establishment.

For supporters like David Fischer, it may not matter which Paul gets in the race, as long as one of them does so.

"I feel pretty confident that their views are largely congruent, and I'm satisfied that Rand Paul is somebody that I could support," Fischer said. "And of course, I could support Ron Paul for president."