# Can a viable Republican candidate survive the primaries? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 21, 2012, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724 "2012-11-21T15:14:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 42
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724/42 "2012-11-22T00:29:57Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > You can’t afford to abandon a sizeable fraction of your base. These “far-right loonies” supported Perry, Bachmann, Cain, et al in your primaries, when given a choice. > > You should abandon them, of course, and you will, eventually, but it takes a lot of guts to stand up to ridicule by Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump and Ann Coulter. You don’t have that kind of fortitude now. It has nothing to do with fortitude. It’s a practical matter. They aren’t going to play to a sector that ensures their defeat in the general election. They are discovering that this kind of ridicule could perhaps be beneficial, in that it distances them from orthodoxies that the public at large finds distasteful. Look, we may stumble, perhaps through a few cycles, trying to find out what the New World Order is. But IMO that stumbling won’t be because we think we weren’t conservative enough, or need a “real conservative” candidate, or any of that stuff. The Senate races showed how well that worked. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-a-viable-republican-candidate-survive-the-primaries/641724)._