The real problem is that conservatives have not spent a penny, nor given a minute, to the idea of cultivating conservative candidates. They always work off the idea that they just spring up out of nowhere. This is like hoping you grow corn when you haven’t planted corn.
Conservatives of all varieties should set up a perpetual 20 year plan for candidates. Most of the year is schooling about how to be both candidates and congressmen and senators. Then they have to act as part of successful incumbents campaign staffs for at least one election before they can run themselves.
This would mean that not only would they be prepared to run a race with a good expectation of winning, but they would also enter the job knowing how to do their job, and also knowing how to avoid pitfalls.
And throughout the whole thing, the lesson that is pounded into their heads is that party discipline wins all the way around. Going off on your own, unless the party authorizes it, which sometimes it does, is a recipe for both individual and collective disaster.
If conservatives would do this, it would guarantee conservative rule for decades.
An excellent point and suggestion!