You are correct. That is why we (the GOP base) must insist on a conservative in the primaries. We need to stop letting the GOPe divide and conquer by running multiple "conservatives" to dilute our votes. While all of the "conservatives" in the last presidential cycle fought each other to prove who was Reagan's heir, Romney cruised through to the nomination with never more than 30% support. You don't win the general election when you can't even excite your base.
Conservatives jumped from candidate to candidate slowly whittling our choices until we finally said we don't like our remaining choices. The elite stuck by Romney throughout. If we can ignore the press and elite who will be telling us the conservative candidates sins in succession and simply put our support behind a strong candidate, we can win.
We hurt ourselves by demanding purity... our enemies show our candidate's impurities and we bail. Like it or not, we're going to elect a fallible human. Accept that and support him (or her).
“We hurt ourselves by demanding purity... our enemies show our candidate’s impurities and we bail. Like it or not, we’re going to elect a fallible human. Accept that and support him (or her). “
We’ve had some good guys way down on the ticket, but they never get much support. It would be good if they agreed among themselves that the lowest polling candidates would resign early if they don’t get at least 30%. That would leave us with a RINO and a conservative. But, it takes a huge ego to run and somebody polling 9% will run, essentially taking that 9% away from somebody who was conservative but could make it against the inevitable RINO if he had that 9%.
Sometimes the best thing a candidate does is resign early. Sometimes the best thing a long serving politician does is drop dead.