Matt Bevin is running for the United States Senate in Kentucky. The businessman and father of nine is committed to the pro-life cause. Several of his children were adopted. In 2003, he lost a daughter in a car wreck. The Southern Theological Seminary’s Bevin Center for Missions Moblization is named for Matt Bevin’s daughter.

Matt Bevin is a good man. Right now he is being subjected to withering attacks by Republicans who have long profited from the status quo. Bevin, like a number of other candidates this year, is challenging an incumbent Republican Senator — one who has been in Washington since 1985.

If Republicans want to change Washington, D.C., we must change our own team. We must change the team that heralded passing TARP as a great day for the United States Senate. We must change the team that grew government itself while claiming to be in favor of small government.

Matt Bevin understands the odds and stakes.

“Whenever people tell me that I’m crazy, it’s when I’m on to something,” he said. “Because most people are fearful, because most people are timid, the field is not nearly as crowded. Many of those people frankly are more qualified, more capable, more experienced to succeed. But they don’t have the intestinal fortitude. They literally don’t have the stomach for it, and that’s good because it makes room for people like me.”

If we want to change the course of this country, we must change the course of our party, and we must do that by changing the men and women who’ve gotten used to Washington. They’ve gotten used to the status quo and profit from it.

I have said before and will say again that the single greatest thing you can do to change the GOP and thereby begin to change Washington is to support Matt Bevin for the United States Senate.

No one is entitled to our vote merely by serving so long in Washington. Matt Bevin deserves our vote because he really is committed to changing the direction of this country.