It has nothing to do with my tastes. When a congressman in a safe, gerrymandered district steps up to the state level, sometimes his views on a particular issue are too conservative for him to be elected.
In Tennessee we almost did the same thing a few years back nominating a “true conservative” named Ed Bryant, whose nomination would have resulted in a Senate victory for Harold Ford, Jr.
Some peoples views are just too far from the wide part of the bell curve to be electable. Akin and Mourdock appear to be proof of that.
It isn’t as though these are weirdo, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, libertarian pervert types, these are mainstream people, republicans that won the party primaries.
If you want to move the party even farther left, then you need to figure out how to eliminate the primary system.