Everyone says Republicans will lose 30 seats because they abandoned their conservaive base.... Is that to imply that "we" will vote for democrates as an alternative or be so dumb as to not vote at all?
It wouldn't take too much to cause certain types of conservatives to stay home, especially if they convince themselves any differences between the parties (or their candidates) are so small as to not make it worth the effort to vote.
This may be why the Republicans are trotting out things such as the marriage amendment and the flag protection amendment. Some people need that sort of reassurance.
The people the R's pi$$ed off consist of a large amount of the GOTV foot soldiers.
These people worked 100's of hours free to get R's in office in the past few elections.
They aren't going to put in that effort for the R's to stab them in the back again.