[dforest]

"They fail to appreciate that the name of the game is to win elections. If we lose them, we lose everything, including any hope at all of furthering our principles in the long run."

When you have a candidate that does not share any of your principles and you vote for them, you have given up all your principles and have rendered yourself voteless. Once people are browbeaten to vote for a person based on unproven logic, that we just want to win, you can never go back. In otherwards, we can't say we will vote for Rudy without knowing that his candidacy alone is without principles. If we do that, the cause of conservatism will be gone for a long time, or maybe forever. Rudy will not further our principles because he doesn't share our principles. Neither do Republicans that support him.

If Rudy gets the nomination it would be better for our cause if he loses, proving Republicans have shot themselves in the foot.

In the end, Democrats are not going to vote for Rudy. They will vote for Democrats because they don't trust Republicans.

Without conservatives, Rudy is dead meat. But...we know you can win without us, so we have been told.

[TommyDale]

When you have a candidate that does not share any of your principles and you vote for them, you have given up all your principles and have rendered yourself voteless.

Wow! Very well stated!

[The Pack Knight]

When you have a candidate that does not share any of your principles and you vote for them, you have given up all your principles and have rendered yourself voteless. Once people are browbeaten to vote for a person based on unproven logic, that we just want to win, you can never go back.

Some people seem to forget that the modern conservative movement was begun with an election Republicans lost, that being 1964.

Conversely, the historical Republican victories in 2002 and 2004, and the way Republicans governed afterwards, led to the situation we have today, where it's going to be very hard to convince the electorate that Republicans, if elected, will follow their traditional limited government principles in the future.

There's simply no logic to the argument that electing a Republican, any Republican, is the only way to further the conservative movement.