Principled limited government constitutional conservative Ken Cuccinelli has issued an appeal to Rand Paul supporters to vote for Ted Cruz now that Senator Paul is out of the race for president, and it is an appeal that we wholeheartedly endorse and invite our liberty-minded friends to accept.

As Cuccinelli noted in a letter to Senator Paul’s supporters, “Rand has been the most passionate defender of civil liberties and personal privacy – not just in the U.S. Senate, but anywhere in government today.”

We agree.

Cuccinelli went on to respectfully suggest that when it comes to protecting civil liberties and the privacy of law abiding citizens, Ted Cruz is – by far – the strongest remaining candidate among any of the GOP contenders for President.

In fact, said Cuccinelli, “as best I can tell, most of the other remaining candidates consider protecting civil liberties a vice rather than a virtue! Rand exposed several of them in the debates (Christie and Rubio) and, without your support, one of them may very well win the GOP nomination for President. “

Ken went on to point out that Ted Cruz has never sacrificed his commitment to protecting our entire Constitution – including the Fourth Amendment.

From our perspective, one of the key reasons liberty-minded voters should look to Ted Cruz as their candidate, now that Rand Paul is out of the race, was Cruz’s first major foray into “standing for what’s right” in the U.S. Senate.

Less than two months after Ted Cruz was sworn-in, he came to the Senate floor to defend the Constitution and support Senator Rand Paul, and take on the conventional wisdom of the Senate’s Republican greybeards.

The issue was Senator Paul’s filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to head the Central Intelligence Agency, which was precipitated by the Obama Administration’s refusal to say categorically that “no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

If duly elected members of the United States Senate won’t stand for that what will they stand for?

In one of the more shameful examples of the GOP elites’ abdication of their responsibilities, none of the Senate Republican “leaders” stood with Rand Paul in his 13-hour effort to stop Obama’s drones from following us home to American soil.

Neither did Senator John McCain, former presidential candidate Lindsey Graham or the Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Republican Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma (usually a reliable conservative) or then-Vice Chairman of the Senate Intel Committee establishment Republican Saxby Chambliss, nor did any of the other Senators who criticized Obama CIA nominee John Brennan’s arrogant and often scary testimony during his confirmation hearings.

But Ted Cruz did and his appeal to libertarian-leaning constitutionalists is one reason why Ted Cruz is the only top-tier candidate left who can unite the new 21st Century limited government constitutional conservative coalition necessary to win the presidency.

Limited government constitutional conservatism is a wholly formed world view – it is not a smorgasbord from which a candidate, Marco Rubio or Donald Trump, can choose a few morsels convenient to his taste and then claim to be a “conservative.”

And as Ken Cuccinelli noted, when we talk about protecting the Constitution, Ted didn’t just start in the U.S. Senate. His track record of promoting and protecting the Constitution goes all the way back to his teenage days when he traveled to parts of Texas to talk to other teenagers about why our Constitution was such a blessing to America and the world. Later on, as the Solicitor General of Texas, Ted appeared in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on numerous occasions to successfully defend our Constitutional rights.

Protecting the Constitution and respecting the rule of law are habits Ted has demonstrated over a lifetime said Cuccinelli. “Ted has fought for them as a Senator and, with your support, he will carry them back into the White House – a place that has not seen respect for the Constitution and the rule of law for a long, long time,” he noted.

But said Cuccinelli, there’s a good chance that Ted Cruz won’t win without the support of liberty-minded Republican voters.

Rand Paul has been a leading voice for limited government – a passionate shared commitment which Ted has demonstrated in the U.S. Senate.

And as Ken Cuccinelli pointed-out, the example of Iowa is evidence of Ted’s commitment to limited government. Of all the candidates to run for President since Big Corn started getting ethanol subsidies and artificial regulatory advantages (cronyism), there have only been three candidates ever to go to Iowa and make the case that Big Corn’s special treatment by the federal government is wrong. Those three are Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz.

Both Rand and Ted, said Cuccinelli, went into Iowa asking for votes this past year, and if they were less committed to their principles, they might have backed down from their commitment to ending Big Corn’s ethanol subsidies. Most people said that with Ted’s ethanol position, he didn’t stand a chance in Iowa. The Iowa establishment even carried on an “anybody but Cruz” campaign in a desperate attempt to crush opposition to ethanol subsidies forever. Yet we won!

We won, claimed Ken Cuccinelli, because Ted told the truth about special interests and how they are polluting our politics, and we won raising the banner for free markets and warning of the danger of Washington picking winners and losers.

So, said Cuccinelli, I would ask you to consider this question as you contemplate whom to support going forward: If you think that cronyism (in both parties) is corrupting and bankrupting our government, why would you expect any candidate who won’t tell Iowans the truth about ethanol subsidies when he or she needed their votes to go to Washington and tell the 10,000 other special interests that their gravy train needs to go away?! It isn’t going to happen.

If you’re as furious as I am about special interest influence and the Washington cartel, then I ask you to throw your support to Ted Cruz!

On the issue of the Fed, noted Cuccinelli, the leadership of both Doctors Paul (Ron and Rand) has successfully changed the thinking of most grassroots Republicans, as well as others, about the damage of the Fed’s irresponsible lose money policies. If you help Ted become the next President, he will sign a re-elected Senator Paul’s Audit the Fed bill, and that’s just a start!

Finally, said Ken Cuccinelli, I also want to acknowledge Rand’s leadership in fighting for criminal justice reform. Again, Ted is not in exactly the same place on these issues as Rand, but unlike much of the GOP field, Ted is open to the need to reform our criminal justice system.

In Ted’s native Texas, said Cuccinelli, former Texas Governor Perry (who has endorsed Ted Cruz) led the nation to achieve exactly such improvements in Texas over the last ten years. Today, Texas enjoys one of the lowest crime rates it has ever had during my lifetime and they reduced their budget at the same time. If tough-on-crime Texas can find ways to reform its criminal justice system while making Texans safer, there is no reason we can’t do it at the federal level too.

Ted’s record shows that he can be trusted to support the implementation of meaningful reform to make America safer, to make real the opportunity of redemption for those who have done wrong, and to save taxpayers’ money – our government is bankrupt after all!

Senator Rand Paul’s election to the U.S. Senate in 2010 was a blow to the establishment and a great day for liberty.

We look forward to his re-election this year, hopefully by a big margin!

And we join Ken Cuccinelli in inviting all our friends in the liberty movement join us in support of Ted Cruz for President. We hope in the years to come to see a President Cruz signing bills from Senator Paul that will reduce government’s footprint in your life and advance the cause of liberty.

To achieve all this, Ted Cruz needs your support. With Senator Paul’s departure from the Presidential contest, Ted Cruz is the only candidate running for President who would advance the causes that have been so ably championed by Rand Paul.