It wasn’t careless, and it certainly wasn’t a misinterpretion. It is exactly what is happening, including in your own reply.
A larger slice of a smaller pie is not usually a winning strategy against someone else with a guaranteed base from a fanatical floor.
The GOPe is trying to use the evangelicals as an adjunct TO a base of the mushy middle, which will never work.
They get smeared by the press for being too conservative, and the real conservatives are tuning them out and not voting.
Real conservatives are on a par with, or greater than, liberals in numbers -- the GOP should build on them, and then add the big tent: not pitch a tent and try to carnival-huckster conservatives in, when they know from experience they will be betrayed (McCain-Feingold, endless promises of "vote for us to get the Supreme Court followed by Roberts on Obamacare, etc).
Cheers!