Today's vote for Speaker of the House is about much more than who will lead the lower chamber over the next two years. It's also about the future of the limited government, the principles on which Republicans run but often seem to cast aside when they're in power. All one needs to do is look to the not so distant past to find examples.

A common complaint that we hear among liberty-minded grassroots activists is that Republicans have no backbone. When Republicans are right, they often lack the courage to fight for what they believe in and instead succumb to the Democrats. We’ve seen this kind of cowardly behavior time and time again from John Boehner who has been speaker for the last four years. There’s good reason why an EMC Research survey found that only 25 percent of GOP voters want Boehner to be reelected as speaker, while 60 percent said they want someone new.