Yes. I ask you , who was the last conservative to win a state wide office like Governor or Senator in California?
If you look at 1992 when conservative Bruce Herschensohn and moderate John Seymour were running for the two US Senate seats that were open you will notice that Herschensohn came within a whisker of beating Boxer, thanks to a last-minute dirty trick, but Seymour lost by a huge margin on the same ballot with the same group of voters.
If I had the time I could go on and on about 98, 2000, 2002, and how moderate nominees get beaten really badly and conservative's lose by small margins. In 2002 the party establishment threw about amillion dollars at the end to really liberal Republican Gary Mendoza running for Insurance Commissioner, who lost substantially. Everyone flipped the bird at McClintock who came within a fraction of a percent of winning.