I agreed with your conclusion

But your closing absolutely nailed it. No matter what any of us thought before about either of these candidates, one of them will be our nominee tomorrow. It is incumbent upon each of us to get behind whoever that is.

I haven’t made it a big secret that I think that Castle has an abysmal voting record that far ourweighs whatever warts Christine has, and that I am beyond appalled at the scorched earth tactics of the GOP Establishment in this race.

But having said that for the last time, if Castle wins this thing, I will be *all over* the first O’Donnell supporter that even looks like they’re going to take their ball and go home because they didn’t get their way. If McDonnell wins, I’ll gob-smack the first gloating O’Donnell supporter who shows up on here to rub it in.

I fully expect that my brothers and sisters on the other side of this Great Kerfluffle will do the same.

Republicans shouldn’t have to support the nominee because she’s too conservative but the conservatives should/will get behind Castle?

And how does Christine’s ‘baggage’ rankle the mods and lib Republicans any; more than Castle’s liberal voting record rankle conservatives?

The only vehicle for conservatives is the GOP. To clean up the ‘conservative movement’ requires cleaning up the vehicle in which the conservative movement rides.

You can distinguish in your own mind all you want that you want to clean up the conservative movement, and Castle doesn’t bother you because he doesn’t claim to be a conservative. But the average voter doesn’t parse this anywhere close to the way you do.

The Mike Castle’s of this world destroy the GOP brand every bit as much as teh Tom DeLay’s because each of them supported legislation which blurs the distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans, except Castle and his ilk do it at a rate that far exceeds the faux conservatives.

You can clean up every conservative apostate in the Party and as long as the moderate/liberal wing of the party is around to cast votes for bills such as DISCLOSE and Cap & Tax, the MFM will put the pateena of ‘bipartisanship’ on those bills and when they prove to be disastrous, the vehicle into which we must place the conservative movement is damaged.

And in the public’s mind, there is no distinguishing between a conservative acting like a moderate/liberal and a moderate/liberal acting like a moderate/liberal. It’s *all* the same Party to them.

primaries.

We did that in UT, FL, PA, KY, CO, and AK. We didn’t do it in AZ and IL. We’ll see tonight what we do in DE.

But the bottom line is, once the “RINO” has won our nomination, he automatically becomes the better candidate. In some cases, like NV & KY, there’s a huge difference; in others, like IL, the difference is smaller.

But there’s still a difference. And if we want better candidates to vote for in the General, we need to recruit and better fund conservative candidates in the primaries (if we’d have done so in AZ, I believe Johnny Mac would have been history this year. The man spent $21 million to run against a guy w/zero name recognition and a guy who was a walking gaffe machine and he *still* only got 56% of the vote).

But that’s all spilled milk, water under the bridge, etc. I can’t stand Mike Castle’s liberal voting record. I seethe at the GOP Establishment’s scorched earth policy once again in a primary to back a moderate/liberal candidate.

But if Mike Castle wins this, he’s *our* candidate starting tomorrow morning and he’s better than Chris Coons (marginally IMHO, but still better). If we want to take him out in 2014 because he continues to vote more like a Democrat than he does a Republican, then the good conservative folks in DE need to get inside their Party as Precinct Committeemen, take it back, and get a better challenger next time.