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Let me explain this for those of you who are getting all self-righteous about this or that candidate.

IN THE PRIMARIES you vote for the candidate that most fulfills your vision of the perfect candidate. If he is a good candidate, with good organization and backing, he will win. If he doesn’t have good organization or backing, he wasn’t that good of a candidate. You might have liked him, but you also might like liver and onions. Your taste/judgement just might be flawed.

IN THE GENERAL ELECTION you vote for the candidate that is CLOSEST to your ideal. Staying home because your candidate didn’t make it out of the primary means that you are helping the candidate you REALLY don’t like. The party will not go “shucks, darn, we should have gone with Candidate B instead of Candidate A.” They will see that the more liberal candidate won, so they obviously need a more liberal candidate themselves the next time around, since the more conservative candidate got such little support.

It may be flawed, but it is reality.

Let me explain this for those of you who are getting all self-righteous about this or that candidate.

Let me explain this to those of you who are too dim-witted to understand why many of us are done with the GOP-e, forever (hint: it has nothing to do with self-righteousness, a characterization that applies more to those who think, incorrectly, that they are smart in voting for a Republican solely because they have an "R" next to their name). Just because candidate R is marginally less liberal than candidate D, this does not make him automatically the lesser of two evils. Liberal Republicans are in a position to do far more harm to conservatism (and therefore this country), than are Democrats. Liberal Republicans (who detest conservatism with a passion that is often greater than that of Democrats) are in a position to prevent a cohesive opposition party to emerge. This is something that Democrats simply cannot do, but liberal/anti-conservative Republicans can. They can tarnish conservatives and conservatism in a way that Democrats can't, they can muddy the conservative message in a way that Democrats can't, and they can sabotage conservative Republicans in a way that Democrats can't. While the primary is obviously the best place to rid the political world of these vermin, it is not the only place. Put either way, the situation is quite simple: as long as the McCains, McConnells, Cornyn's, Grahams, are in reasonably powerful positions within the Republican party, there will be no effective opposition to liberalism. To vote for any of those in the general election, is to vote for the elimination of any cohesive opposition to liberalism.

We would be much better off with a party that occupied 30% of the house/senate, but was cohesive, united, committed, agile, and most importantly effective, than we are with 50%, but are completely (almost comically) ineffective, and populated by people who are actively opposed to conservatism. The former can lead to eventual success. History is full of examples of relatively small political movements that, because they are cohesive, committed, and effective, are ultimately successful. The latter, of which you approve, inevitably leads to failure, and a long slide into the oblivion which is full-blown socialism. That, as you say, is the reality.