No I voted for conservatives because they were the right choice. In 2000 I voted for one the persons who helped start the Conservative movement of the late 70's on for POTUS because he was right on issues. Unfortunately a sizable majority are very eager to let the RNC and media shills do their thinking for them. What is your excuse? The DEMs will win? Well I got news for you. The DEMs won the White House in 2000 and 2004. They don't get all they want out of Bush but sad enough they get more than what an energized and united Conservative GOP would permit a DEM. The GOP with the Rockefeller Republicans will never stop the DEM's now think about that.
The GOP is now two parties within itself which must part ways for the good of the nation. Having two Liberal Parties in power is destroying us. Rockefeller Republicans have taken the GOP to a point of no return.
Purist “conservative” ideologues are more destructive to the conservative “cause” than honest liberals.
You insist on your fantasy that there ever was a “conservative Senate” or a “conservative GOP” in the Senate. That has never been true. Conservative Senators have to work WITH the NE Republicans and other “moderate Republicans” as possible to move the nation in a more “rightward” direction. It’s remarkable how well we’ve been able to do.
People from the heartland of America just can’t comprehend how different the political atmosphere is in the NorthEast, I guess. It is EXTREMELY difficult to get any type of person who has even moderately conservative credentials on a ballot. Example: Guilliani, clearly “liberal” to the rest of the nation, gaining the “Republican” nod for NYC mayor. You may not like it, but he was FAR more “conservative” in any respect than his Demodog and Green and Socialist opponents. Example, again NYC: Bloomberg changing parties a couple months before the election to run as GOP. It is not that there weren’t more “conservative” candidates in the mayoral race, it is simply that those candidates can’t even win the Republican nomination because they are “too conservative” for the NYC Republicans! Yet, they were both more conservative than any D opponents, and had far better chance to win election as an R than otherwise.
If NE Republicans fail to nominate people like these, or like Spectre who votes “right” 60% of the time, the result is almost never getting someone like Santorum on the ballot and winning - you instead get someone like Casey who votes in a “right” manner 5-10% of the time. Thus, the “conservative cause” weakens, and debacles like this immigration bill come to pass.
On the other hand, it is possible to cobble together temporary coalitions of those RINOs in order to pass legislation (or prevent it) in a way that it is impossible to manage with the lock-step liberal Demodogs! For a current example, compare in the following:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:SN01348:@@@S the “Record Votes” #198-206 on the immigration bill & amendments. Check out the way the two RINOs Snowe & Collins and the Independent Sanders shifted votes depending on their stance about that specific amendment and compare that behavior with some of the really scary NE liberals like Kerry, Kennedy and Clinton. Choose some other examples of your own, if you like (Byrd is amusing). The fact is that the Demodogs like those will WIN every “conservative vs. liberal” race in the NorthEast. Those are the types of votes you’re getting by defeating RINOs - you won’t get a Sessions or Cornyn from the NorthEast... and those “RINOs” are the only thing standing between the where we are now in the US and true socialism.
Every NE (or similar) RINO who is defeated by a Demodog weakens the conservative cause, and that weakens America, as election 2006 has shown. There really is NO alternative to working with them other than communism or succession.