The knock-on effect of refusing Mitt a vote certainly can be debated about. Strategic withdrawals can very well result in better wins in the future.
What’s surprising to me, politically speaking, is that there is NOT a Perot figure looming on the horizon to deal the worst candidate a sub mandate win (not that Obama would care, but still). Goode is maybe the closest to a national figure — and he’d formerly been not GOP but Democrat. It seems a bit odd that he has ended up where he is now. Anyhow, he hasn’t anywhere close to a Perotish public stature.
Nature has a way with vacuums. Including, we can hope, Human Nature.