So, in your deluded opinion, someone is a RINO if they refuse to ignore the core principles of the Republican Party and vote for someone who is the opposite of what a Republican is supposed to be? Did you work in the Clinton White House basement in the spin department? Maybe a little side work for Goebbels?
Just because you vote Republican doesn't mean that you are a Republican and that you support their core values. A Republican is not a Republican simply for party power. I mean, I may be wrong, but I thought a true Republican was someone who supported the platform and the stated principles of the Republican Party and not just someone who can march in lockstep and robotically do what he's told. I'm an individual, not a vote to be taken for granted.
It is not all about power. What good is the power you gain if you've abandoned the principles you intended to promote in the first place?
What good are principles if you lose elections? They end up defeated, for the most part.
The time to get a candidate who reflects the platform is the primaries. That's the appropriate time for such things. But when you get to the general election, you put aside the differences in the primary, and you get behind the guy who won the nomination at that time - at least that's how I thought it was supposed to work.
Warner and DiFrancesco did not do that after their guys lost the primaries in the respective races, and they faced my condemnation for their back-stabbing. I'm not going to make an exception for those who do the same thing just because they happen to be more conservative than Warner and DiFrancesco were.
I wasn't aware that a "true" Republican would allow a Democrat that opposed everything in the GOP platform to win by sitting on his hands in a given race - or by sitting home.