Your memory doesn't jive with mind. No one presented Perot as "bitter medicine" aiming to correct a wholesale leftward course of the Republican party, and Dole, while weak and a stupid choice, was not a guy who insulted fellow Republcians, threatned to change parties, and a Democrat Republican backstabber the caliber of McCain. Age and maybe "It's my turn" thinking are the ONLY similarities between McCain and Dole that I can see.
The people I know who voted for Perot back then did so because they truly believed he might win and because Perot told them what they wanted to hear, not because they felt that Dole would be WORSE for the nation.