This takes place long before the nominations and campaigns.
If you wait for the campaign and go out with the most perfectly nuanced appeals to people who usually don't vote for Republicans, you will usually lose!
Jefferson's DemocratRepublican party swept the Federalists from history by following that basic plan ~ first find the voters ~ then provide them the candidates they want.
NOTE: The Federalists imagined that the best people ~ men of education, position and property would select the best people for public office. We know how that worked. The only federalist most of us know of as a federalist was Justice Marshall, the 4th Chief Justice.
DISAPPEARED
SLATE WIPED CLEAN.
The only other federalist notion remaining is that of the GOP-e's belief that you pick the candidate first, then get the voters.
With 90 million adult Americans not voting at all seems to me a little effort could find that additional 6 million voters we need to skunk the Democrats!
The GOP has a more basic problem ... FIRST they have to have a candidate that people can be motivated to vote for. I don't care how far ahead they start, if they run somebody like Jeb Bush in 2016, the saying that applies is "that dog won't hunt". The GOP lost the "hold your noses and vote" contingent in the last election and it appears they might be too stupid to have learned a lesson from it.