Paul on what ails Republicans

As many Republican contenders and pretenders gather in Miami to talk about what went wrong and what to do next, Ron Paul has his two cents.

Paul, the Texas congressman, developed a core of dedicated supporters and a formidable online fund-raising operation during the GOP presidential primaries, then held a counter-rally during the party's national convention.

"Now, in light of the election, many are asking: What is the future of the Republican Party?" Paul writes in a commentary for CNN. "But that is the wrong question. The proper question should be: Where is our country heading? There's no doubt that a large majority of Americans believe we're on the wrong track. That's why the candidate demanding "change" won the election. It mattered not that the change offered was no change at all, only a change in the engineer of a runaway train."

At the Republican Governors Association gathering, potential candidates in 2012, including Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty, will give their take on the party's future. Paul argues that the party strayed from its core principles after winning power during the Bush presidency -- and must return to those beliefs to regain voters' trust.

"The Republican Congress never once stood up against the Bush/Rove machine that demanded support for unconstitutional wars, attacks on civil liberties here at home, and an economic policy based on more spending, more debt, and more inflation -- while constantly preaching the flawed doctrine that deficits don't matter as long as taxes aren't raised," he writes. "But what the Republican leadership didn't realize was that ALL spending is a tax on middle-class Americans through price inflation and that eventually the inevitable consequence is paying for the extravagance with a financial crisis."

"Party leaders concentrated only on political tricks in order to maintain power and neglected the limited-government principles on which they were elected. The only solution for this is for Republicans to once again reassess their core beliefs and show how the country (not the party) can be put back on the right track. The problem, though, is regaining credibility."