Were you a voter in 1964? I was, and those are the same kind of things I and other hard line conservatives were saying about Goldwater back then. He was the great conservative hope who would we just knew would lead the nation out from under New Deal/Fair Deal Democratic socialism and Ike's country club style moderate Republicanism and back to conservative principles.
The general election took care of itself alright, it gave Republicans the worst beating since the FDR days and gave America LBJ, who IMHO was absolutely the most evil, crooked, despicable man ever to sit behind the Oval Office desk, and that list includes Bill Clinton.
I'm not saying that Hunter is not a better man for the job than Fred, personally I think he is. I'm just saying that in many instances the perfect is the enemy of the good, and in this case the good is light years better than the worst, which is what we will get if Hillobamary is elected.
In a way I was. I was in the first grade in the fall of '64 and we had a presidential election in our class. I voted for Goldwater and he won the vote in our class. That made me even more disgruntled and shocked when LBJ won the big election.
And given the likely Democrat opponents, I agree with you that the good will look even better and the electability of our guy will take center stage. But I do wish that my more obscure ideal candidate could get more of a hearing before the shadow of electability silences the discourse.