Your points are valid. Still, you need to remember, in a state as left-leaning as California, Republicans don't have many good options.
Remember, however, that's the same thing they were saying 40 years ago with the establishment GOP saying if we didn't run liberal Mayor George Christopher for Governor, that "right-wing nut" Reagan would lose in a landslide. We need to present our positions, and unapologetically so, with strong candidates, otherwise all we acknowledge is that the liberal Democrats won the ideological argument in California. We don't need another Democrat party. One is too many as it is.