The intertwined destinies of conservatism and the GOP

I think John Hawkins hit the nail on the head here:

Just as the Republican Party can't win without conservatives, conservatism cannot win without the Republican Party. When the Republican Party cratered on Tuesday, the ability of conservatives to shape and influence government policy cratered with it.

That's an important thing to understand because a lot of people on the right, I'm not talking about Ivy here, seem to have the mistaken impression that the fate of conservatism and the Republican Party are not intertwined. So, they errantly believe that if the Republican Party loses an election, conservatism isn't affected or if they go off and vote for some loser Third Party, that they're still doing their part to move conservatism forward. Sorry, but that's just not true.

Although merely having Republicans in power doesn't guarantee that a conservative agenda will be enacted, for a conservative agenda to be enacted, Republicans need to be in power.

I think a lot of conservatives understand this, but many others don't. Hitting the self destruct button on the GOP does not really help conservatism all that much unless your goal is to
perpetually be the minority party. If a Republican truly does not deserve his or her job, you get rid of them, but getting rid of Republicans out of ideological spite is petty and unproductive. If you want to make a change within the party, you had better get it done in the primaries because the general election is exactly the wrong time. As hard as it is to beat an incumbent in a primary, it is even more difficult to rebuild and regain the majority and then hold it.