Lines like that tend to mean just one thing: expecting social conservatives to vote for social liberals who run as Republicans.
Thanks for your comment, Dr. North, but since you’ve inferred an incorrect meaning to my line about not expecting 100% adherence, I have to defend myself, if you don’t mind...!
I completely agree with you that we need all three legs to the conservative stool: all our candidates should be economic, social, and foreign policy conservatives.
But we will always have some differences. No two humans are identical, and no two districts are identical. My point is that some districts will need a candidate who’s a little impure on a local issue like sugar supports, ethanol, or bilingual education, so we can’t be too rigid.
On the other hand, we must draw the line at too many such deviations. In my state, Illinois, a leftist Republican Congressman named Mark Kirk is being jammed down our throats as our US Senate nominee. We must realize that somebody like that is way too far over the line for even a moderate to support.
My closest friend in the legislature for years, now retired, was a wonderful libertarian lady who was right on absolutely every issue except abortion. She was the toughest in the state on economic, criminal justice, business issues... just wonderful... but a moderate on abortion, with us only on the easy issues like parental notification. We need to understand that one or two deviations like that have to be acceptable, but many (as in Kirk’s case) must not be.
Otherwise, we wind up with Spectors and Collinses and Snowes and Jeffordses; who render us impotent even when we have the majority.
JFD