The establishment actually started down this road even before the election. Hence, we have insiders like Rove attacking TEA party candidates.
The only thing I would take issue with is I don't think the establishment believes they will lose with Romney. IMHO, they think they will win and become even more entrenched and marginalize the conservative element of the GOP.
We may well be headed toward a break up of the GOP.
I didn't say that, just that they would rather lose running a RINO than win running a conservative. We saw that manifested in 2010 - if they didn't get their RINO in the primary, they stabbed the Tea Party candidate in the back repeatedly - after years of telling us we should support the winner of the GOP primary even if that winner was a RINO.
And now the same GOP-E cheerleaders are coming out on FR telling us that the GOP-E socialist is a vast improvement over the Dem socialist, when both were for bailouts and both were for government-mandates for health care. And both are political chameleons whose primary reason for seeking the presidency is their own rank narcissism. A pretty tough sell.