Your premise is that a strategy of electing moderates in liberal states is a winner and that supporting a conservative is stupid. I gave you an example from elsewhere of why the strategy you propose is both dysfunctional and destructive to conservatism, as it has been proven to be over and over. If you can't handle that, too bad.
I could give you legions of parallels from a "liberal state" of California, but I'm not going to bother, because rather than discuss the strategy in principle and what I regard as the faulty underlying premises you would prefer to confine it to a specific case for which I do not wish to bother. If you want another Lincoln Chafee, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or Jim Jeffords (ALL GOP moderates in Northeastern liberal states), that is your business.
It doesn't work. The strategy leaves Republicans owning the results of liberal policies.
The problem is that your "example" didn't address anything I had actually *said*. You threw back the example of Reagan (presumably over Ford or Anderson or some other GOP moderate). Problem is, your example (which I would agree with, btw) applies to the nation as a whole, but has no bearing whatsoever on a Senate race in a liberal Northeastern state. Yes, Reagan could win over the whole country, but this DOESN'T translate into the ability for a truly conservative Republican to win any specific Senate race in a liberal state. Can you name me any conservative Republican who has been elected to a statewide position in a liberal state in the past two decades? Of course you can't. Running a conservative in Connecticut means you get 30% of the vote, meaning you lose. You're "example" was entirely non sequitur.
I could give you legions of parallels from a "liberal state" of California, but I'm not going to bother, because rather than discuss the strategy in principle and what I regard as the faulty underlying premises you would prefer to confine it to a specific case for which I do not wish to bother.
In other words, you can't answer the question I asked, so you'd rather try to move the goalposts in a huff. Fine. I can live with that.
If you want another Lincoln Chafee, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, or Jim Jeffords (ALL GOP moderates in Northeastern liberal states), that is your business.
No, I'd rather have Duncan Hunters all throughout. But I'm also sane enough to realise that we're probably never going to see that in Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, etc. etc. The best we're going to get is RINOs, so RINOs it must be. I'd rather have in a moderate Republican than a liberal Democrat, since at least with the RINO you get *some* of what you want, rather than *none* of what you want, and at least with a RINO, the total GOP numbers are increased, so that the GOP is more likely to have a majority, which can then allow it to put critical chairmanships of committees, etc. into the hands of conservative Republicans, rather than leaving them in the hands of liberal Democrats.
Honestly, I don't see why so many people have trouble figuring out this simple concept.
It doesn't work. The strategy leaves Republicans owning the results of liberal policies.
I disagree. I think most people are smart enough to realise that, for instance, Porkulus passed with only three "Republican" votes. I don't think most people are going to blame (or credit, depending on their position on it) the entire GOP for the actions of three Senators who are widely known to be way outside the GOP mainstream anywise. And if there are people who ARE inclined to do so, then that is their own fault for being uninformed buffoons.