I guarantee you, that if every true conservative drew a line in the sand and said, 'Not Another Step Further!', that there'd be fireworks in Tampa, and we'd emerge with a better nominee."Every true conservative" is easily outnumbered by all the other demographics and political sub-sects that comprise the right hemisphere of politics. "Every true conservative" ain't enough to get it done. We would also have to convince all those folks who aren't "true conservatives" who are voting for Romney and donating gobs of cash to him.
Consider the more conservative candidates running against Romney in the primary. *NONE* of them got anywhere near "threatening close" to Romney. There were just too many moderates, rinos, centrists, blue-bloods, etc. lined up to vote just like they were told to vote -or- they actually preferred Romney. Not to mention Romney's gazillion "bucks of backing". Conservatives never had a chance.
Probably no one here will agree and they definitely won't like hearing it, but we need to grow our conservative-voting head-count by multiple orders of magnitude. We need more financial leverage to compete with "the elite/RINO" money bags as distasteful as that is. I don't see how anything changes in our favor until we get those done, and more. The best we can do for this particular election now is cross our fingers and push some mystery candidate like Hoefling who is virtually unknown outside of conservative circles.
We have *GOT* to find some way to do far, Far, FAR better next time than we did this primary season.
Your premise is valid, but there's another factor that I believe played a far greater role in the final outcome of the Republican primary, and it's that the right Reagan Republican never stepped forward to run.
All of the candidates who stood to the right of Romney had their plus points, but none of them had the total package of conservative idealism, smarts, courage, executive experience, charisma, outspokenness, and eloquence that would have (and could have) eliminated Mitt.
The stars were perfectly aligned for that person to step forward, but for whatever reason, she didn't. Had she done so, she would have walked to victory in the primary and the general without breaking a sweat. She would have also gone on to do the exact things in office that are needed to turn this country around.
Of this, I have no doubt.