Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) has consistently been in Sen. Rand Paul's corner both in Congress and during the senator's run for president. Now that Paul's out of the running, who does Amash think libertarian conservatives should look to in the race?

Amash answered that question today in an opinion piece at the Independent Journal. He is throwing his support to Sen. Ted Cruz, noting that while he doesn't agree with Cruz (especially in civil liberties and foreign policy), the senator treats limits in government authority more seriously than some other candidates. Here's some of his reasoning:

Take, for instance, Ted's opposition to cronyism and corporate welfare. Unlike his competitors, Ted understands that when we allow the government to pick winners and losers, the American people lose. He isn't afraid to challenge the rampant corruption in Washington, and he isn't afraid to champion economic freedom. Ted won the Iowa caucuses with a principled stand against subsidies, even though pundits warned that no one could win the state without pandering to the ethanol lobby. On civil liberties and foreign policy, Ted and I don't always agree. But he was one of only ten Republican senators to stand up for our rights by supporting Rand Paul's amendment to kill the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015—also known as CISA—a cyberspying bill that violates the privacy of all Americans. And Ted has been a stalwart defender of our Fifth Amendment right to due process, strongly opposing the government's asserted power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge or trial. Like me, Ted believes that the United States must be well defended and respected around the globe. He stands with our troops and will not put them in harm's way unless necessary to protect our country. Unlike some other Republican candidates, Ted opposed intervening in Libya and voted against arming Syrian rebels, and he will not use our Armed Forces to engage in nation building.

But will other libertarians come along? The problem may be that Cruz appears to be compromising some of the more libertarian-leaning elements of his platform in order to try to dig into Donald Trump's populist authoritarian appeal. Just in the past 30 days Cruz appears to have backtracked and turned against much-needed federal sentencing reform to reduce mandatory minimums, said Apple needed to comply with the FBI's demand that they provide access to San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook's iPhone, despite the potential privacy repercussions for the rest of us, and just last night declared that he, like Trump, would attempt to deport 12 million illegal aliens, an utterly impossible (and unpopular) goal. And let's not forget he recently called Edward Snowden a "traitor."

Cruz has been clearly making a play for libertarian conservatives like Amash, and Amash does make some good points about where Cruz has historically been good on issues of liberty. But even though Cruz has occasionally been an ally of Paul's in the Senate, Paul himself has declined to endorse him (or anybody else) after dropping out of the race.

Read Amash's full endorsement here. And check out Reason magazine's April issue, hitting the stands now, for Matt Welch's lengthy interview with the congressman. If you're a digital subscriber, you can read it right now, in fact. If you're not, it's only $15 a year ($10 if you're a magazine subscriber) and you can get such insights as this from Amash: