We just ran two back to back RINOS against Obama and both lost. They cannot win. Cain would have won.
Let me get this straight. Akin and Mourdock, two Tea Party candidates, can't even win in Missouri and Indiana, both of which went for Romney by 10% margins, but you think a conservative Akin- or Mourdock-type candidate could have won the presidency. While I wish that were true, I'm gonna bow to recent experience and say it's unlikely.
At the same time, I see your point. I think conservatives need a wake-up call about what is possible. We need to nominate a straight-up conservative ticket in 2016 and see where that takes us. If we re-run 2008's complete wipeout, it will lead the more intransigent among us to understand that you can't go home again.
Politics is the art of the possible. What is possible in red states is different from what is possible in swing states. If we require multiple shellackings at the polls to accept this basic principle, so be it.
Am I being defeatist? All I can say is that the Founding Fathers understood that democracy is a death spiral. Once the property requirement was removed from the franchise, ambitious politicians began buying indigent votes with other people's money. Reagan's failure to dismantle the Education Department one year into its existence shows that the death spiral doesn't stop even for the nimblest of politicians. Ultimately, we, the people, have pointed a pistol at our collective head. Every program the Dems gin up gets us in deeper. I just want to stand athwart history, yelling stop. Unfortunately, it just keeps hurtling into the abyss.