[JamesP81]

If you’re convinced that, if, at this moment in history, a liberal R were elected over a very liberal D, the “GOP would become a centrist party which would, in a short time, undo everything that social conservatives have worked for for 30 years,” do you think cutting and running on the Republican nominee on Election Day will hinder or facilitate that process?

Hinder. If the GOP gets its posterior handed to it, maybe that will force the undersized brainpans at the RNC to realize that running libs for office isn't a winning strategy. It's so simple it's Pavlovian.

Finally, let’s say you get the candidate of your heart’s desire and he loses to a liberal D. What do you think the impact would be on the country of, say, 8 years of Rat-dom?

Short term, it's worse than a liberal R. Long term it's about the same as a liberal R. One just causes the destruction faster than the other.

[wouldntbprudent]

You give the RNC way too much credit.

People run because they want to win. That’s what is pretty simple.

The people in the race today are there because they think they can convince millions of Republican primary voters to vote for them. That’s what is pretty simple. It has nothing to do with what the RNC thinks.

And you’re flat-out wrong if you think bailing on the GOP on Election Day would hinder what you predict would be the devolution of the party (I don’t agree). Now, how would that work?

Are you saying you think the party-—meaning all those millions of people who voted differently than you in the primaries and the general election-—are somehow going to come crawling back to you on Wednesday?

What would be their motivation for doing so? So they can be undercut by you again sometime in the future when the majority’s will won’t bend to the minority?

All that will happen is that a bunch of good folks who could be doing some good for the country will be sitting on the sidelines, marginalized for the foreseeable future.

I don’t look forward to that or want it to happen. But it is what it is.

Turning this moment in history into Apocalype Now is hardly helpful. Politics ebbs and flows. We are in a moment now much like after WWII. The Republican Party faithful didn’t much like Ike and he certainly did not like him. But he was the man for mopping up the war and leading the nation through the post-war period, and they went for it. History matters, and it’s quite short-sighted not to see all that is at stake in this moment in history.