It’s not the Republican politicians that are at issue so much.
A Republican politician cannot just run for office by fiat. He must be nominated by the rank and file. If rank and file Virginia Republican voters are spineless RINOs, then so will their candidates be in the general election. If they are solid conservatives, then they will nominate one.
It is ultimately up to the “grassroots” to put forth the candidate that represents their values.
That is exactly right and while I am as frustrated as everyone else there are worse things than RINOs. As far as I know every RINO voted for our Supreme court nominees with the exception of Chaffee. Would a Democrat have done so? I think not. If having a party full of purist(which I would like) means we are back down to 30% of the senate and house then how does that help us? These are northeastern states for the most part and to think those people are going to elect a true conservative at this time is not realistic, we still have some hearts and minds to change.
Agreed.
To an extent true. But the power in the Republican party lies in those who put up big chunks of money for primary campaigns. For the most part, these are businesses who see the government's role to be to let out a lot of big contracts to them and to leave them alone, except when it comes to preventing competition from other businesses.
By and large, the qualification to be a recipient of big primary money is: (1) You need to sound conservative enough to bring in the base; but (2) You need to be willing to play ball with the money guys when it's important. It frequently works out OK because the money guys just don't care too much one way or the other about many conservative causes--in fact, they may genuinely believe in some of them--low taxes strong national defense. So they don't mind if the base gets its way on those issues and often approve.
Social conservatism exposes this difficult coalition. Business R's don't like spending ANY political capital on abortion. The illegal immigration debate also exposed this divide but in a different way. The base and the money were on different sides of the issue. The stress that put on R politicians was enormous. Their donors were pushing hard one way. Their voters the other.
Back to your original point. As a practical matter, it is very unusual for a good conservative candidate to get past a primary in which a ball-player is his opponent. The ball-player gets all the money and his donors make sure that party officials who don't play ball pay a price.
So in an ideal world, primary voters would look past the money and nominate conservatives. In the real world, there is rarely a general election choice between a dem and a conservative. Rather, the choice is usually between a dem and the most conservative guy the money guys have to put up with to get him elected (depends on locale), but it is almost certainly someone with a record of playing ball when his masters say fetch.