Left's profitable Pauline conversion?

Debate raging between Left, Greens and Progressives on whether or not to support Libertarian Republican outsider Dr Ron Paul's bid to win the Republican nomination for President.

Really, it is a no brainer, of course the left should be supporting Dr Ron Paul's bid to win the Republican nomination and many are – see Blue Republican movement. All the other candidates are openly saying that the United States should bomb Iran, whose key allies include China and Russia. All of the other Republican candidates would do nothing to address Wall Street's crimes. All the other candidates would happily attack civil liberties further.

Obama has done nothing to address Wall Street's crimes. His administration is full of people from Wall Street and Goldman Sachs is his largest donor. Civil liberties have been further decimated, and tensions with Iran have been raised to dangerously high levels.

It is naivety in the extreme to think that Obama's second term would be any different (remember that Clinton bombed Iraq and repealed Glass-Steagal in in his second term), unless political pressure is applied. As there is no democratic primary challenger to Obama, that pressure must come from Dr Paul.

Ron Paul's campaign is unique for the major parties in that he is calling to end the wars overseas, restoration of civil liberties and to end the favouritism shown to Wall Street over Main Street.

If Ron Paul won the Republican nomination Obama would be forced to debate these key issues on which is first term administration has failed miserably. Obama would have to stop taking the left for granted, or risk losing the Presidency.

Perhaps the best kept secret in American politics today is that Ron Paul is the only non establishment politician who has a shot at beating Barack Obama in the 2012 Presidential election. Despite the mainstream media ignoring him, polling between Dr Paul and Barack Obama consistently has Paul within striking distance, but just out of reach of Obama and Paul polls very well with the important young and independent voters.

No other non status quo politician's organization comes close to rivaling Dr Ron Paul's. The grassroots Ron Paul Revolution's(written rLOVEution) ability to raise money from small donations is phenomenal with its 'money bombs' (Ron Paul holds the record for money raised in a day for a Republican candidate, money raised in a day online, and leads all candidates including President Obama in money raised from serving military personnel).His team has been putting together some very effective political ads such as this one.

Of the two Paul has been the most outspoken in support of the Occupy movement. Paul has said 'I'm very much involved with the 99. I've been condemning that 1 percent because they've been ripping us off. The people on Wall Street got the bailouts and you guys got stuck with the bills and I think that's where the problem is.'

There are certainly a lot of ideological differences, but there is also a lot of common ground between the Left, Greens, progressives and Dr Ron Paul's Constitutional Libertarianism, even if Paul's reasons behind these shared goals differ from Greens and the left. Paul has worked closely with Democrats, Greens and the Left on a number of issues.

After Paul exited the 2008 race, he rejected a request to endorse John McCain's candidacy, and instead endorsed four third party candidates - Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, independent Ralph Nader, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin.

All four candidates found common ground with Paul agreeing that the most four most important issues were bringing US troops home from around the world, restoring civil liberties, investigating the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationship with big banks and large corporations, and not to increase the federal debt.