That's basically my approach too:
Vote offensively (for the best candidate) in the primary.
Vote defensively (for the candidate to the least damage) in the general.
IF you want to win a war, first you have to win some battles. You don't win battles by sitting out...
We have a winner...
Two words: Pyrrhic victory.
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine
Vote defensively (for the candidate to the least damage) in the general.
IF you want to win a war, first you have to win some battles. You don't win battles by sitting out...
I consider yours to be the most Reaganesque post of the last hundred or so in this ongoing argument.
I would only add that as a long-term strategy, the right-conservative base must individually and collectively begin flooding the entry level ranks of the Republican party machinery, so as to eventually replace the RINOs now running it, as well as those who are in elected office.