This is the same apologetic tripe some FReepers keep throwing at us in CA about RINO Schwartzenrenegger, the political hermaphrodite!!!
He's doing what he thinks he needs to do.
Can't say I approve of it.
Can say with pretty good certitude that, assuming I had the money and the sort of "presence" required to be a credible candidate, and ran just on what I believe, straight-up, that I'd lose in the liberal Northeast.
It is also certain that if all of the many Northeastern moderate and liberal Republican Senators and Congressman (the "RINOs" of conservative parlance) were to run on Southern Conservative values, that every one of the seats in the Northeast would be lost, and the Democrats would have a crushing, permanent majority in the House and Senate.
Northeastern Republicans are not very conservative. They're MORE conservative than their liberal Democrat neighbors, but they'd be considered flaming liberals in Texas. Southern Conservatism is NOT the majority party of the country. Republicanism is, and that's a blend of Southern Conservative and Northeastern moderate-to-liberal.
If you want no RINOs, you want permanent Democrat rule, because that's what you will certainly get, without any question.
Indeed it is, and it is getting very, very old.
If they don't reverse course soon, there won't be a single conservative (real conservative, not the pretend-conservatives we're used to seeing around here) left in the GOP base.