I think what blinds them most is typically a single-issue, driving a self-importance pining in search of affirmation from other conservative bretheren. They sit around in self-validating in-bred little clotches and discussion groups, are often found publishing tin-foil rags which quote each other amongst themselves. A sense of objectivity is driven from their midst, which ultimately leads to self-contradiction, much like "inquest" has demonstrated here already. They ultimately suffer from a mistaken, unrequited, fringe-like "messiah" complex.
Study the type of person that makes up of the membership of the declining John Birch Society. CP-ers are dead ringers for this kind of mentality, and thoroughly useless to the cause of promoting conservative thought in the main-stream, because they don't want to be mainstream. Deep down inside they think they are better than Reagan-style conservatives. Again, it harkens back to that psycho-self-importance validation need again.
Their slogan might read something like "We know we're winning, because we're losing!" The good just becomes the enemy of the perfect, and CP-ers ultimately only excell at their own intellectual self-immolation.
-Your insistence that the CP represents a mortal threat to the Republicans, yet that the Republicans have no interest in wooing themYou just can't run from the truth, pal.-Your giving credit to Bush for co-opting issues of importance to the Democrats, but refusing to let him take the blame for the resultant leftward slide
-And most eye-poppingly, your citation of Bill Clinton as the best thing for conservatism, even better than Bush, while saying that Bush must not be allowed to be defeated, at all costs.