Allow me to don my tin foil hat here for a moment and say that the deciding seems to be done before we even vote in the primaries. Nobody I knew wanted GW to be the Republican nominee, but somehow we got stuck with him. What a big-spending, open borders disaster he turned out to be. I doubt very much that the nominee this time will turn out to be a true conservative, either.
Recall that FR didn't want him, either, in 1999.
But also recall that many of the people out there are not conservatives and/or don't keep themselves up on the information that most FReepers know.