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I’m tired of all of this talk of Pyrrhic victories: If we win, we lose, in other words. Total BS if you ask me. The Dems, of course, never think and act that way. They fight to win EVERY election and so should we.

That's because "we" are not all talking about the same "we" in every instance.

If the GOP wins, who wins? The GOP. The RINOs. But what about conservatives, do they win?

The GOP vs. Democrat party fight no longer embodies the conservative vs. liberal fight. Its more like the ultra liberals versus the mild liberals.

So if the GOP wins, the conservatives "win" in that we get the somewhat less liberal "mild liberals" rather than the ultra liberals.

But is that a "win" for the conservative movement, for people who really support conservative ideals?

Or does it empower the GOP to keep stuffing itself with mild liberal RINOs and claim its what their voters want? Does it give the GOP more of a mandate to squash those few conversative GOP candidates that they so love to step on?

I agree that the GOP consistently sabotages itself while the Dems fight to win at all costs. But that's because all the Dems care about is winning, staying in power and owning the government. They are all liberals, so when the Dems win, the liberals win, and when the Dems lose, the liberals lose.

Conservatives want to win to change things, fix things, peel back the ever-expanding government, and then go home. The GOP does NOT want this. The GOP does NOT want to shrink government. They want to get in power and stay in power. That's why they aren't really against Obamacare -- it expands the government, which the GOP will love once they can get in there and run it themselves. Conservatives just want it to go away.

The conservatives are frogs in the water pot, hoping the GOP wins so they only turn the heat up 2 or 3 notches, rather than the Dems who will crank it up 6 or 8 notches.

I think the definition of RINO has changed in recent years. Back in the day we used to call them Rockefeller Republicans. Senators like Lowell Weicker, Jacob Javits, Arlen Spector, Olympia Snowe, Jim Jeffords, John Chafee, Charles Mathias etc. And they REALLY were liberal Republicans, mostly from the northeast.

I do not think most GOP senators today are anywhere near this liberal. Sen. Mitch McConnell has a lifetime ACU rating of 96%. Sen. Pat Roberts is ranked as one of the ten most conservative members of the US Senate. To classify these senators as RINOs is simply absurd. Nothing in life is perfect, least of all politics. There is no such thing as utopia or perfection in the political world. One thing the far right has in common with far left is an almost child like insistence on purity. As Ronald Reagan once said, politics is the world’s second oldest profession. We have to work with what we have. Here in CA where I have I live, ALL Democrats are Marxists. No exceptions. I have always voted the straight GOP ticket since I have lived here. Not that every Republican I have ever voted for was perfect. Far from it. But without exception, every single Republican candidate I have ever voted for was much closer to my own personal views than any Democrat. Politics isn’t rocket science. It’s very simple. You work with what you have. There is no time for day dreaming.

“The conservatives are frogs in the water pot...”

Conservatives are stuck in a situation remarkably similar to that a junkie. At one time, the GOP actually was the party of conservatives. It was great! There was NO question about which party to vote for. At an ever increasing pace, the GOP hardly embodies the conservative principles people of this nation are seeking. So now, the discussion across the country, and on Free Republic in particular, is along the lines of ‘You MUST shoot up this heroin just this one more time and avoid the inevitable pain and deep soul searching. Buy into the illusion that this will somehow bring the satisfaction it used. After all, what are you going to do? Become one of those meth heads?’