We have a winner-take-all electoral system. This naturally leads to an equilibrium wherein there are two dominant parties who compete for the marginal voter. In practice this means, as you know, that in almost all elections there will be at most two candidates with a nontrivial chance of winning. Thus, if you want to vote at all, your choice boils down to which of those two you would prefer to win and/or which of those two you would prefer not to win. Whether you liked it or not, one of those two candidates was (probably) going to win; if you sat out or voted third-party because you didn't like that you were "only" given someone to vote against, it's precisely as if you didn't vote at all. Does not voting at all make you feel like you had a better choice than if you had gone ahead and voted for some (R) you didn't like all that much?
Anyway, this is all an inevitable, predictable outcome of the fact that we have winner-take-all elections. By complaining that you were "only" given someone to vote against, you are complaining about this natural outcome of our electoral system. Are you advocating a switch to proportional-representation elections?
Polling and cajoling the true believers and politically active isn't where the answer lies. You can't win if you only get your true believers.
Neither can you win if the true believers engage in a masochistic, senseless "revolt" that accomplishes nothing.
Politics is basic marketing... you have to differentiate your product. Growing the size of government, expanding entitlements, shamnesty, laziness and a host of other issues hurt the GOP... not the activists who tried to send a message.
Come on. Both hurt the GOP. It's not either/or.