Is it me, or am I seeing party operatives say, "Go ahead and vote for your silly conservative in the primary, but when my guy, the established incumbent wins, you better support him in the general!"
Oh my goodness, someone get this one some tinfoil. Who is belittling voting for the best candidate in the primary? I haven't seen a single person argue against that. What's your malfunction?
That is exactly what you are hearing.
In fact, just the other day, some bots were bashing conservatives for complaining about Bush and -- get this -- rubbed it in our face that 'we knew what he was for when he ran. If you didn't like it, you shouldn't have voted for him'.
So let me see if I have this right.
We listened to them in 2000 and 2004 and voted for him because the alternative was so much worse. Then, when we complain about what we got, they say that we should have withheld our votes.
Then we are supposed to be sheeplike enough to follow their advice again? I don't think so.
It does happen the other way around sometimes. Senator Coburn won the senate seat with grass roots support when the party elite endorsed another candidate in the primary.