Great post and excellent point!
Yet, on this forum, we still see the pouting and howling because their man/lady did not win.
Well..they did not do a good enough job of pushing that candidate. They should have got into the inside of the campaign and made sure he/she won. Not on Free Republic, but inside the campaign.
So we have this..and since virtually nearly every single one of them say they are Reagan conservatives and all that, then maybe they better heed the advice of Ronald Reagan. Get behind the candidate and get him/her elected even if you do not like him/her. Take it a little at a time, and pretty soon you’ll have the whole thing.
You are terribly naive if you think the voters control the election process, and not the power-brokers behind the scenes. You can watch any number of movies from the 1940s and 1950s to see that even the Hollywood types back then knew that the rich and powerful handlers get people elected to major office in the USA, not the voters.
We have some say, such as this year the economy is going to doom incumbents, including the incumbent president. So Romney is a lock to be president. But during the nominating process, not so, we voters had very little control. It is the behind-the-scenes power-brokers who tend to control major elections. They give us the illusion we are in control. We are not.