It is a zero-sum game.
Thus, for now anyway, the votes are either D or R. Any vote that does not go to one or the other increases the relative size of the remainder. Thus any non-R vote increases the proportion of D to R.
I wish fervently we could get something like the Tea Party (and I seem to recall a Constitution Party a few years back) that hewed to true Conservative Principles.
But the bottom line is, for now anyway, any vote not for (R) ends up being a vote for (D). Again think of a pie chart for proportionality.
For now our battles need to be in the primaries and the Gubernatorial elections.
However, once those are done and we can say with all moral certainty we did all we could to get Conservatives on the general ticket, we MUST vote for the most VIABLE conservative person on each ballot
You still have not shown us any viable conservatism from Romney. Where is it?
“It is a zero-sum game. Thus, for now anyway, the votes are either D or R. “
In order to have a zero sum game there has to be a finite number of members belonging to the set.
While you like to pretend that voters must choose either R or D there is no such rule in law or in fact. It’s a convenient artifice for the establishment of both parties to use but it just happens not to be true.
In the real world voters can skip part of their ballot. They can vote third party. They can write in their choice. They can stay home.
When the major parties alienate their voters they pay for it. Democrats learned this in the ‘70s when Reagan Democrats elected Ronald Reagan. No amount of badgering was going to get them to vote for Carter or Mondale.
The GOP establishment is on the receiving end of a similar message but it is quite obvious that they are too stupid or too venal to heed it.
Conservative voters aren’t likely to vote Democrat but they are likely to choose another of their options. If the Republican establishment selects another liberal Republican to run they will have only themselves to blame when they lose.
No amount of badgering is going to win them any votes. If anything it is just going to make conservative voters even angrier at the GOP for blaming them for the lousy choices of the GOP elite.