There are many reasons why Republicans lose races that should have been easily won. One of the main ones is the lack of unity among us. I’m not just talking about our elected representatives, I’m talking about us, the citizens that call ourselves “Conservatives”, and the pundits that express Conservative ideals to the masses. It seems that we have forgotten that our allegiance should be to our Constitution, and the principles of Conservatism, not individuals. We are divided around our favorite candidates and when they don’t quite live up to the higher standards and character that Conservatism demands, we make excuses for them instead of holding them accountable. We vilify the other candidates, tearing them down, regardless of how well they do or do not uphold Conservative principles in their voting records or private lives.

Democrats play the long game, we do not. They are united by their party’s platform and rally around it. They support any candidate that upholds that platform regardless of their personal character. The groom and coddle potential future candidates, only sacrificing them when that candidate’s actions suddenly become a liability to them, or because sacrificing that person serves the greater good of the party in some way.

Republicans play the short game, one election at a time. We go all in on one candidate even before the primaries and sacrifice the other candidates simply because they dared to run against the chosen son.

We need to remember the core principles of Conservatism: lower taxes, protecting life from cradle to grave, less government interference in our daily lives, believing in American exceptionalism, and knowing and upholding the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, all of it.
The ways in which we can hold the government accountable to these principles may be open for debate, but the principles are not, and we need to be identifying and training future candidates, not destroying them because they chose to run now.