The problem is that for many Conservatives their candidate is perfect (or at least close to it) and all others suck, meaning that there’ll be a blood feud primary season that results in a lowest-common-demoninator, non-Conservative candidate like Romney getting the nomination.
Here’s how I see 2016 going (at the moment anyways) it’ll shake out to Cruz (vision, rhetoric) vs Walker (executive experience). Probably with Perry playing spoiler. Both Cruz and Walker are good and acceptable candidates for Conservatives to rally around. And Conservatives WILL rally around them.
Then dig in and fight to the death for them. Either handing the nomination to a Romney/McCain clone (TBD), or causing so much bad blood that we’ll have an election where a good chunk of the Conservative base stays home, even WITH a true Conservative heading the ticket.
We have to differentiate between being a conservative and being stubborn. The two are very similar.
I would say that a conservative crosses over to being stubborn at the point that his efforts become counterproductive to the country.