Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was the first speaker at today’s opening day of the Values Voter Summit in Washington D.C. He spoke of violence throughout the world, violence in the womb here at home, as well as the moral and spiritual crisis our nation faces.

I had the honor of having breakfast with former US Attorney General Ed Meese at the Liberty University-sponsored breakfast. Ambassador Barukh Binah, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, DC., was the keynote speaker. I also learned that in addition to GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan speaking this morning, GOP Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney will also speak.

I flew to Washington D.C. today to cover the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. This year’s event should be especially exciting for a number of reasons. It’s an election year, GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan will be speaking, and tensions are elevated with the shooting of a FRC security guard by a homosexual activist less than a month ago. Should be interesting.

I can’t believe what I’ve been reading the past few days. So-called conservative Christians are bailing on Cruz (although they were probably never with him to begin with) and backing Trump. Talk about selling your soul.

As the Washington Times reports, the American Conservative Union has released its latest scorecard on how well members of congress uphold the conservative values that produced the greatest nation in history. The findings: only one presidential candidate from congress scored 100%, and that was Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Ted Cruz is making a bet that the center of gravity of America can and should move. That our youth need to hear that every moment matters, that there is right and wrong, that choices have consequences for which they must take personal responsibility. And that is what really defines the essence of freedom.

Erick Erickson at RedState has a good article which plays off a Washington Post article regarding the marginalization of evangelicals in the Republican Party. He points out that a number of the names being kicked around on the GOP side for the 2016 presidential race are losers.

No politician had a greater impact on the past year than freshman U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Cruz made his biggest mark when he and fellow freshman Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) led a last-ditch national grassroots effort to defund ObamaCare before the law went into effect fully. Imagine how many Senate Democrats wish right now that they had heeded Cruz’s entreaties and agreed to delaying or defunding it for one year.

Ted Cruz won. Senate Democrats are scrambling to delay the implementation of the very individual mandate they fought to keep in place by choosing to shut down the government. Now, they apparently have seen the light, no longer bamboozled by Obama’s promises that the $600 million healthcare exchange website would work and that all would be OK in the Sebelius fantasy world if the mean Texan just stopped talking.

There is a growing contention that “young adults haven’t rejected the case for marriage; they simply haven’t heard it.” Exactly. Very few people, even in conservative circles, can articulate why marriage is important and must be defended from counterfeiters and other attackers. In the past, when society was strong and values were passed on from one generation to the next by stable family environments, such things were simply understood. Now we find ourselves-largely due to our own laziness and negligence, conservatives-in a culture where we must explain what was once obvious. If we consider the values that produced the greatest nation in history important enough to maintain and pass on, we are going to have to start explaining and articulating those values to the culture, and help them understand why they are so critically important.