We did things your way in 2000. Voting for a "moderate" "he can win" "compassionate conservative" that the left then demonized anyway got us a Democrat majority in congress in 2006, once those "compassionate" policies of "reaching across the aisle" predictably failed.
We did things your way in California when, after two successful conservative governors in Reagan and Deukmejian we elected "moderate" Pete Wilson. He, with Carl Rove's help, gutted the CAGOP conservative base and installed his crooked corporate gamesters. Within two years California elected Gray Davis and headed predictably down the tubes.
We did it again with "fiscal conservative" Arnold Schwarzenegger. The results were even worse.
If you go back in history, the ONLY Republican presidents who were followed by another, albeit "moderate" Republican, were Coolidge and Reagan, both conservatives.
Electing RINOS as some kind of intermediate step toward conservatism fails, every time, because the policies they enact NEVER undo what the left has done. They are merely watered down progressivism still headed over the communist cliff.
So, I'd like YOU to "take a bow" for the disaster GWB inflicted upon this nation.
No more traitors. No more RINOS. I'm not doing things your way in 2012.
So I will take that bow for trying even if I end up with a RINO and then I’ll assume you will take that bow for BHO - because you didn’t.