>>the Republican voters who nominated John McCain.<<
Ummm ... you’ve made my point. Conservatives didn’t nominate McCain. He was nominated by non-conservatives and so-called moderates and was the only serious candidate by the time many primaries came around. I’ve already conceded that we didn’t have many good conservative candidates this time around, but to the extent we had anyone that was a good conservative, he quit! I didn’t have a chance to decide whether Romney or Huckabee (or whoever else) would have made a good candidate because they quit before the primary I voted in.
I’m quite aware of how the process works. I don’t think YOU understand what I’m saying. Its a dual point: conservative voters are staying home because they don’t like moderate candidates and the ones they do actually vote for — whether they ran as conservatives or not — act like moderates in office. We went from Ronald Reagan landslides to sweating out or losing almost every election since.
>>To see whomever you believe is the “right” man in office, you need to campaign for him and convince the majority that you’re right.<<
I’m sorry. I really didn’t realize up until this comment I was dealing with someone who either thinks on a very basic level, or just wasn’t paying attention to why I posted what I did (i.e. didn’t read what I responded to). I feel like I’ve wasted my time answering your post, but I guess that’s my fault and not yours.
Let me see if I can make my point clear to you: if the Republicans want to win elections, they will stop nominating moderates like McCain, AND they will start demanding their elected officials (unlike Bush) behave like conservatives in office.
I don't buy your assertion that the Republican Party only nominates moderates. There were much more conservative options than McCain, but as I watched, each one was shot down over smaller problems than McCain has. So, rather than getting someone with 70-90% conservative credentials, depending on whom you pick, we got the one hovering in the 50% conservative zone.
Too many die-hard conservatives are completely unwilling to compromise at all and cause such deep divisions over comparatively small things that the moderates win out.
Voters who want candidates who are more conservative will need to learn to live with candidates who aren't perfectly conservative, whatever that means.
When it comes to elections, the strength of unity sometimes must outweigh the purity of idealism.