The base would fund an honestly conservative GOP.
The current, dishonest and not-conservative GOPe? Not so much.
And there is value in organizing beyond what an individual candidate can muster in a single campaign.
True, but does it make sense to fund a dishonest and non-Conservative GOP now, in order to create the organizational infrastructure and opportunities that will force it to become honest and Conservative down the road?
Building a permanent, 50-state campaign apparatus (which was Howard Dean’s goal as DNC Chair) is going to open a LOT of paid opportunities for Tea Party and other Conservative activists. Who will then grow in influence within the larger GOP organization (formal and informal) over time.
But that sort of thing takes time, patience, the willinness to take intraparty political losses, etc without just upping and walking away in anger and frustration.
This is how the Progressives worked within the Democrats over the last few generations. The 1970s battles between the Progressives and the Dem old guard were legendary, for instance. And while progs like Patricia Schroeder got kicked in the teeth quite a bit by her own Party, she and her fellow travellers were patient enough to play the long game knowing their to e would come.
It did, and it’s now her/their political heirs running the Dems and the country.