Party pretty much is the only earthly lever left to US conservatives. As ugly and cruft-covered as it has gotten, what else is there — throw the elections to the Most Evil Party out of spite and then pray God for mercy?
HOWEVER, there needs to be a longer term effort to supplant the old guard with younger Tea Partiers. All supported by earnest prayers to the Lord every step of the way. What McDaniel tried to do was very admirable; perhaps the time was not quite ripe for its success.
I agree. Also, it’s true that local conditions may have influenced this (somebody said that Southerners are very leftwing economically, and I have noticed this to be the case). However, I think it’s pretty undeniable that the black Dem vote was what put him over the top, and since 35,000 of his votes came from black Dem districts that had never voted GOP before, it’s true that he wuz robbed.
But he and everybody else has got to move beyond that and work at correcting the election laws (NO open primaries) and at trying to pressure whoever is the GOP senator or rep to at least toe the line and stay within the limits of the GOP positions as announced. Of course, then it’s possible to work on making those positions more conservative.
But this is all a long-term commitment, and just getting mad and leaving is about the worst possible thing a candidate or even a voter could do. It just hands it all over to the Dems, and leaves conservatives with no leverage at all, even in the GOP.