Because we do have a mutual interest in seeing Obama gone from office, they use the scare tactic that 'we can't afford' not to nominate good old, safe, 'moderate' Mitt Romney. That a solid conservative such as Sarah Palin (my choice), Michelle Bachmann or Herman Cain is too unique, making such a candidate supposedly 'unelectable'. The Big Scare continues: nominating anyone but a nice, safe 'moderate' (Romney) will 'guarantee' another four years of the Kenyan Marxist in the White House. Yada, yada, yada. I don't buy it for a moment. Nice, safe 'moderate' Republicans lose to liberal Democrats like Obama. Too much is at stake, now. This election is it. The TEA party will live or die by the 2012 presidential election. It will either be subsumed by the GOP hierarchy and metaphorically emasculated or it will overthrow the Washington D.C. Republican elite's machine and nominate a true conservative, forever changing the dynamic of party politics in the GOP. It's up to us. Mitt Romney cannot be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and if he is, I, along with many other conservatives, will not vote for him. The elites need to realize that nominating Romney is a losing proposition for the Republican party, not the other way around. Nominate a real conservative and we'll open our wallets and crawl over broken glass to vote for that candidate. Nominate Romney, wallets snap shut and we vote for 'anybody but Romney' - and effectively withdraw from the Republican party. I don't want to see that happen and I hope the RNC elites get the message, soon.
I don't know of any reason to believe that any of that would go away under Palin or Bachmann. They play ball just like the rest of them.