If it was up to me alone I'd nominate a candidate that was 100% conservative but that's not the way it works. It's a group effort and I am just a member of the group, as are you, unless you take your football and go home.
If it was up to me alone I'd nominate a candidate that was 100% conservative but that's not the way it works. It's a group effort and I am just a member of the group, as are you, unless you take your football and go home.
The football belongs to the GOP. If they want to bench me for the entire game that's their decision. If a candidate chooses to court votes from group A as opposed to courting votes from group B, it's no disgrace for group B to not vote for him. The individual candidates and the party elite decide whose votes they are going after. Each party tries to position themselves so they can draw as many votes from the middle as they can without losing the base. They may decide that it's worth losing some of the base if they can pick up more votes elsewhere. If they choose to move so far left that I can no longer give them my vote, fine. I don't take it personally and neither should they, it's their decision. If the candidate makes a bad decision he may alienate his base without gaining enough votes elsewhere to make up for it resulting in his loss. Again, it's not the voters' fault. Like you said,politics is the art of compromise. If a candidate isn't a very good artist, he has noone to blame but himself. When you run a candidate as far left as Rudy is in the GOP, you're very foolish to assume that you'll hang on to all the conservative votes.