Your way -- which I've been doing for more than 35 years -- when is it going to start working? Because so far, all it's done has been to push the Republican party left.
You are literally voting "Heads they win, tails I lose." It's why the Republican party is so much farther left than it was 20 years ago, and why the Democrat party is so much even FARTHER left.
You're a fine one to be lecturing on understanding "how an election really works."
If you're at all informed politically, you have a duty to vote. I have a duty to vote in every way possible to prevent amoral government tyranny. If that means using my little milligram of difference, my vote, and tossing it onto the "neither of the above" pile that gets counted, then the PERCEIVED and REAL context is presented: most Americans voted "against" Clinton both times. That was good for limited government conservatism. Had he won with a majority of Americans, or if Bush or Dole had won with a majority -- how would that have helped conservatism? On the contrary, leftism would have been rewarded both times.
It's action and consequence. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, it's been said. If you intend to nix Obama and place your vote in an agent of embracing the same basic government ethic, like Romney or surely Cochran (what kind of morally bankrupt person could he be?) -- only bad can come of supporting that, and the truth is that your vote supports it in the most fundamental way possible.
Action versus intention.
I tell you now, when it comes to choosing the most "conservative" between two amoral government enablers, one Republican and the other Democrat, I will vote for a plurality because it is an ACTION to weaken the popular mandate of which ever bad guy wins.
LOL. The GOP has been moving Rightward not left.
When I first got interested in politics, the center of the GOP was a Rockefeller Republican. One of those couldn’t win a primary now anywhere. Now we have guys like Paul, Cruz, Cotton. The next Congress will be significantly more conservative. But at some point you have to win POWER. For 40 years the Rats controlled the House. Think about it 40 years. If you Kamikaze Koncervatives have your way they will own the White House, and the Congress. Hows THAT going to work out for you?
You defeat the squishes in the primaries. In the general election you suck it up and vote for the MOST CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE YOU CAN WHO CAN WIN.
THATS HOW ELECTIONS WORK.