1.  What better way is there than withholding a vote when one disagrees with a candidate?  My problem many years is that when I disagree with the Republican's candidate on many issues, I still feel it necessary to vote for him out of a horrible distaste for the Democratic candidate.  My vote then is considered, for all intents and purposes, a firm support of everything the Republican candidate stands for.  If two big government candidates are vying for the presidency, as there were last year, any way I vote is considered a vote for big government solutions, even if I wholeheartedly disagree.  It is a message I do not want to send.

2. The Republicans still have within its ranks a huge number of big-government operators that are unable to fathom the long term economic consequences of bankrupting our country.  They scoff at Obama's deficits at $1 trillion plus, but have nary a care over a deficit that runs to several hundred billion.  I think this is madness.

(End of questions...now some pontification.)

I recognize the truth in your comments that the Republicans will need to attract the votes of some moderates if it ever wants to become the majority party.  I wonder though if the better way to attract these moderates to the party (or at least an occasional vote here and there) is to clearly explain why the conservative approach to today's problems is the answer.  The alternative, it seems to me, is having party members line up behind the party's chosen candidate regardless of whatever disastrous policies he is willing to embrace in order to get elected.  One of us, I think, is trying to move the mountain while the other is trying to move Mohammad--I dare not breathe a word about who is doing what.