Two points.
First of all (and I trust I scandalise your practical American sensibilities), winning isn't everything. I am unable to accept the vision of statecraft as merely a technical problem in search of a technical solution. Statecraft does the best it can to get by with greater or lesser degrees of technical competence, but when it abandons principle and transforms itself into a sterile process, whose only raison d'être is self-preservation, it's lost me and (I trust) millions of others. I don't want to be part of any group that defines itself solely in terms of mere survival. It's slavish and (to use an undemocratic word) ignoble.
Second point: your questions appear to assume that politics is a static process. We all know it's really dynamic; that candidates can and do emerge and disappear as political fashion dictates. We needn't worry about finding an alternative, because even now there are alternatives worrying about fining us. If we'll only insist on principles we'll readily hear from candidates eager to conform their ambitions to our agenda, as opposed to the back-asswards approach in place at present. Till then, principled conservatives are not going to risk their careers courting the support of constituencies who don't care enough for those same principles to insist on them. "Build it and they will come" is good advice for a successful approach to principled politics. This may mean that "we" won't win as often. But we'll be heard from, clearly. Happy warriors are respected for their integrity even by their opponents, and in any event we can't expect to propose a vision to the country till we define one for ourselves. "Four more years" is a cry to stir the hearts of placeholders, not of patriots.
Bottom line is that the process exists to serve the people and be conformed to them, not the other way round.