Gee, you mean GOP-e didn't learn that lesson in 2006, 2008, and 2012? By extension, they also didn't learn the lesson of 2010, when the Tea Party gave them the House of Representatives.
It took me a decade to turn my Hispanic in-laws into reliable conservatives. I did it by a sustained defense of core principles, something lacking in today's Republican party. The only core principle that I can see with the GOP is to keep their incumbents in office.
Rove is the worst, but it didn’t start with Rove. Republicans didn’t learn from 1992 after “Read My Lips” Bush raised taxes and cheerfully approved new regulations and spending. Later, Gingrich’s “Contract with America” came to nothing, and now he pimps global warming with Pelosi. Junior Bush and the Rove/DeLay “permanent Republican majority” strategy undid the only accomplishment of the Gingrich Contract, welfare reform, and ushered in the largest expansion of the welfare state since LBJ.
The Bush-Rove-Abramoff wing of the GOP is not conservative. It has always modified its brand of “conservativism” with modifiers like “kinder and gentler” and “compassionate”. When the Bush-Rove-Abramoff types aren’t calling conservatives racists, these GOPe types use other modifiers to describe conservatives: “extra-chromosome” and “looney bird”.
I am not going to vote for people who insult me. I really don’t care if some party loyalist says that not voting or voting for a 3rd party is a waste.