The biggest flaw in the ‘moderate wing of the party is that principled conservatives like Bachman, Palin, Rand Paul, DeMint, Rubio, etc cannot appeal to middle of the road republicans and independents. These are the very types of candidates that decade by decade actually win for the GOP. Reagan is the modern era template, but there are countless others. This last election cycle was filled with dozens ofmthem. Those candidates who stood confidently and clearly communicated conservative solutions to our problems win almost every time. Losers like Mike Murphy (who do not have a winning track record, btw with their moderate candidates) will point to the outliers like NV Senate And Delaware as ‘evidence’ ignoring the hundred or so examples disproving their philosophy. Look at the governors races and winning senate races in key swing states....most went GOP with candidates sharing mostly the same platform as Bachmann.
The whole Delaware thing really irritates me. Christine O’Donnell was a flawed candidate but she won the primary. DeeDee Scozzfava was selected by a certain group of elites to run. Both Christine O’Donnell and Doug hoffman had little to no support from the republican establishment and the same people who were screaming at us to just shut up and accept the fact the Scozzfava was the person that they wanted and support her with our money cuz she was a “Good republican) were the exact same people trying to throw christine under the bus. Anytime someone brings up Delaware, just remind them of New York.
Yeah, in 20-20 hindsight, it might have been better to have had Mike Castle who might have voted with us 40% of the time than the bearded Marxist who will vote with us 0% of the time. But you have to balance that 40% (mostly on issues of minor consequence) with the ability to swing key issues with the McCain type "reach across the aisle" crap and consider that we probably lost nothing by forcing a RINO out in the primary and handing the seat to another ObaMao rubber stamp.