You do plenty of backbiting when it suits you so what’s this “we” business? What you’re saying is shut up and vote Republican no matter who or what they throw at us. We crossed that bar during the GW Bush administration. Where has it gotten us? Window dressing on social issues and kicking the can down the road, and slightly slower on the road to socialist serfdom. No thanks. You go be a party apparatchik all you want, just don’t think you’re entitled to browbeat anyone else into tagging along with you.
No, what I’m saying is the Realpolitgic reality that winning the primary means nothing. We have an all too strong recent history of nominating candidates we loved, who everyone knew would lose the general election, as opposed to nominating a candidate who might be a bit less conservative, but would win the general.
The result of that is there are now at least 3 Dem votes in the Senate that would have been voting our way if we had not nominated a candidate who could not win the general.
We can have anything we want. We cannot have everything we want.
Rule #4 for Conservatives: Work hard to nominate the most Conservative candidate in the Primary, when we know that candidate will win the General.