I think if a conservative candidate acted like a conservative he’d win primaries and general elections. For example, on the issue of immigration, amnesty is opposed by the vast majority of Americans. If Americans in each district were made aware of the true costs of illegal immigration, such as the strain on our health care system, the people would rally behind that candidate. With regards to tax cuts, if candidates stated that tax rate reductions increased revenues to the government, that the rich actually pay more of the nation’s tax burden when rates are lowered, they’d be in real good shape.
The key in my mind is to get true believers to run. Start campaigning the day after an election. Educate the people of their district on a daily bases. Financing will be there from grass roots conservatives if we actually have conservatives to support. So let there be no rino districts. We need to get conservatives to run in every primary.
It sure would be nice to have no RINO districts, but that’s not going to happen soon, if ever.
People today have more access to more sources of information than ever before. No one is locked in to the MSM. Yet there’s never enough to educate the vast majority of the electorate.
That said, it’s not the vast majority that votes in primaries. It’s the party’s activists. They are the party’s most educated and most motivated. Yet they still didn’t seem to realize that if they did not unite and rally around a more conservative candidate, they would get a less conservative nominee.
The “my way or the highway” mentality has become so pervasive and so pernicious that even in a place like FR, there was practically zero unity around one conservative candidate.
So the base fragments and will continue to do so. In the meantime, the party will be looking around for whoever they can get to replace those who continually go on strike. By definition, those replacements will not share the strikers’ views. Thus, the strike causes the party to continue to shift leftward.