I couldn’t have been more proud to sit in the back of the room and watch Jim DeMint during his speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee. This was a quiet Congressman I met in 2003 — hired as the fourth staffer on his primary campaign — who has become a national rock star. He’s done good work, but what’s amazing is that he’s become this rock star for a very simple reason: He tells the truth and sticks to his beliefs.

It’s both exciting and sad to see. It’s exciting to see someone like Senator DeMint become so popular, but it’s sad that he’s become popular for something as simple as sticking to our party’s principles. That goes to show how far our party and our nation have gotten off track.

While our party needs people to reach across the aisle to form compromises, it must have a large contingent of people to drive it to the right. If all we have are moderates who compromise, our nation will surely go to the left. By recruiting and standing beside leaders like Marco Rubio and Chuck DeVore, Jim DeMint forces our party to the right, which forces the moderates to compromise far less of our conservative values.

We need to compromise to move our nation forward, but we don’t need to sell the entire farm. Senator DeMint is one of the only people in Washington reminding us of that. Here’s where the rubber meets the road – you need both moderates and conservatives to get proper legislation passed while in the majority and put the breaks on Democrats’ free-spending ways while in the minority.

It doesn’t make sense to have a party that keeps giving up this or that to mollify Congressional liberals, and it doesn’t make sense to not compromise under any circumstances. The U.S. Congress is not a European parliament. There are 535 members, and they all have a say. Members get elected to get things done.

South Carolinians seem to have figured this out. Our state is a tried-and-true conservative bullwork, sending two men to the Senate who represent both wings of the Republican Party. Lindsey Graham is more willing to compromise to get legislation passed. While Jim DeMint and others like him keep up the pressure to make sure those compromises are in the best interest of our state and nation.

Without Jim DeMint, we’d all be in a much worse position than how things are right now, and he’ll be a leader to turn it around when the GOP regains the majority. And that’s why I’m proud to stand with Jim DeMint.