ANALYSIS/OPINION:

It’s time for a new Republican Party. This is what Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky recently said. The GOP stalwart is right.

Mr. Paul is the ideological heir of his father, libertarian icon and GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul. Discounted as a kook in 2008 and a nuisance in 2012, the Texas Republican’s repeated strong showing shocked the Beltway establishment. His message was simple: End America’s welfare-warfare state. Ron Paul may have lost the political battle. At age 77, he is retiring from Congress and will not run for the presidency again. Yet, he is on the verge of winning the ideological war. History will vindicate him.

Mr. Paul is ahead of his time. He is an anti-statist visionary who champions constitutional government, a noninterventionist foreign policy and sound money. More than any other leader (with the exception of nationalist Pat Buchanan), Mr. Paul grasped the fundamental reality of our time: America has become a socialist empire — both at home and abroad — in danger of collapse. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been bleeding us, squandering precious U.S. blood and treasure. The American public has lost its appetite for military adventurism, especially to promote democracy and nation-building.

Moreover, our exploding entitlement programs and massive deficits have pushed us to the brink of bankruptcy. We are a superpower in name only. America’s global might rests on a giant credit card — one that is about to hit its borrowing limit. We are going the way of Ancient Rome, the British Empire and Austria-Hungary. Our strength has been sapped by imperial overreach, crushing taxation and bureaucratic centralization. Mr. Paul repeatedly warned about these dangers to no avail — until now.

Regardless of what happens with the “fiscal cliff” talks, America’s economic goose is cooked. Negotiations taking place on Capitol Hill are nothing more than a political game. Each side is simply seeking to jockey for popular advantage. Neither President Obama nor congressional Republicans are serious about confronting our debt crisis. We are now the most indebted nation in history. With a $16.3 trillion debt and trillion-plus-dollar annual deficits, the United States is heading right off a fiscal cliff. Raising taxes on the rich by more than $1.2 trillion over the next decade, as Mr. Obama proposes, does almost nothing to stem our rising tide of red ink and will simply punish the private sector, thereby stifling the already anemic economy. America is facing Greece-style default.

The only way out is the path proposed by Ron Paul and his son, Rand: dramatically slash spending, revamp entitlements, cut taxes and regulations to unleash economic growth, dismantle our costly empire, rein in the Federal Reserve, and bolster the sagging dollar. In short, the GOP must abandon big-government corporatism, which has dominated it since the late 1980s.

Mr. Obama’s re-election has triggered not just soul-searching but panic among many Republicans. GOP strategists believe the party must become more pro-government, pro-environment, radical pro-feminist, pro-homosexual “marriage” and open to tax hikes on the rich to win back the White House. Call it the GOP’s “Democrat-lite.” They are wrong.

Republicans lost for two reasons. They had a weak candidate. More importantly, voters still blamed the country’s economic woes not on Mr. Obama but on his predecessor, President George W. Bush. The GOP has been in denial for years. Contrary to myth, Mr. Bush was not some principled conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan. Rather, he was a Great Society Republican. His policies did severe damage to the GOP and to the country. Iraq, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, high deficits, the bailouts and the economic panic that gripped the end of his second term all fostered a widespread sense that Republicans were no longer the party of fiscal restraint, prosperity and national defense. In short, Mr. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” paved the way for Mr. Obama’s state socialism.

Democrats, however, have one major problem: Their tax-and-spend liberalism is about to crash upon the rocks of reality. Our stagnant economy is about to slide into another severe recession. This will cause a huge spike in unemployment, drive the deficit sky-high and cause another downgrade in our credit rating. An economic crisis is around the corner. This time, Mr. Obama will own it. He cannot blame it on Mr. Bush.

Republicans must be ready — probably by the 2014 midterm elections — to offer a viable agenda of small government, spending discipline and low taxes. Otherwise, America is doomed to become a second-rate nation.

Sen. Rand Paul is uniquely positioned to lead the GOP’s resurgence. Intelligent, principled and articulate, he is similar to another, earlier antiwar conservative: Sen. Robert A. Taft. The Ohio Republican led the fight against the New Deal, becoming the arch-nemesis of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

Taft was right. The welfare-warfare state is destined to implode. It is unsustainable. This was also Ron Paul’s central insight. It’s now up to Rand Paul to finish what his father and Taft started — restoring our constitutional republic. The GOP must decide whether it wants to lead this counterrevolution or be swept into the dustbin of history.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist and editorial writer at The Washington Times. He is the host of “The Kuhner Report” from 6 to 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. to noon on AM-680 WRKO (www.wrko.com) in Boston.

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