The bottom line is that, if your candidates won't toe the line on social issues, then you don't get our votes. I don't care who your candidate is running against in a general election. If your candidate (the social issue mushball) loses, the world will still turn even if the brand name Demonrat should win.
Thinking strategically??? How about this: See to it that the social conservative agenda is protected and advanced or you lose! I would include as social conservative agenda items: babies, marriage, guns, military rearmament, sharply slashing public spending on all leftist agenda items (envirowhackoism, gummint skeweling, hands off homeschoolers and private schoolers, slash taxes and thereby the gummint's allowance, etc.) Failure to meet those terms and down you go. Mike Castle would have been just as much a disgrace as Christopher Coons. Castle's sole advantage? One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
Rule or ruin: now and forever. BTW, as to conservatism, I was a Reagan state chair and I bet you were not.
Yeah, well, being in H.S. and never even having had the chance to vote for Reagan kinda prevents me from being a Reagan state chair or anything else. I've never once had a candidate I was thrilled to vote for in a presidential general election. I vote for the Republican because the Democrat is worse.
The bottom line is that, if your candidates won't toe the line on social issues, then you don't get our votes.
And that my-way-or-the-highway thinking just split the vote in North Carolina primary vote allowing the establishment guy to win. The socon's voted for Pastor Harris - Mike Huckabee's candidate, and the TEA Party voted for Brannon. Combined the conservative opposition might have beaten Tillis, divided it just guaranteed the "establishment" candidate won.
Failure to meet those terms and down you go.
Perhaps, or maybe the all-or-nothing types just make themselves irrelevant to the process. Lots of people drop out of the system. It doesn't help, it just reshapes the electorate since, ultimately, politicians cater to who actually votes in a general election. If you don't, then politicians don't care about you.
The primaries are your opportunity to vote for whom you really like. If you want to beat the mushy moderates, social conservatives and more libertarian leaning TEA (TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY) Party types have unify, otherwise the squish wins. And when it comes to general elections in our 2 party system with no opportunity for coalition governance, those are a choice between the 2 candidates that CAN win - rarely will it be an affirmative endorsement of a candidate you really like, not in our system anyway.