There's a lot of truth and a lot of magical thinking mixed up together in this thread. The real bottom line is that coalitions win national elections, hard stands don't, but it's also important not to abandon your core beliefs just for the sake of the coalition, because then victory is meaningless. Vote for some no-chance hard-over guy who perfectly reflects your own ideas, like Ron Paul, if you want, but the GOP will have plenty of company in Loserville, including you and the guy you voted for. Suit yourselves.
Yeah, the shutdown probably did cost Cuccinelli the VA election, but that's really because of the unique makeup of the VA electorate, which has a hugely disproportionate number of Federal employees and Federal contractors who were directly and personally affected by it, and wanted to take it out on someone...though the Paulista no doubt pulled votes because Cuccinelli wasn't pure enough Libertarian for them (Reminds me of something else in this thread...), and the RNC's lack of support put the guy in a ridiculously-unequal spending contest. Changing any one of the three would have probably changed the outcome, but I'm sure the Beltway GOP will try blame it on the candidate rather than their own crappy support or the shutdown, though the Conservative hard-liners will join them in saying it wasn't the shutdown because that might mean actions have consequences, an alien thought in politics on both sides of the aisle.
I won't be voting for fat boy either, mostly because of RKBA but also because he's an asshole. Fox and the Beltway GOP will love him because being an asshole passes for charisma in their part of the country, and he is a (Somewhat) Fiscal Conservative. However, he has no use for Social Conservatives or Libertarian Conservatives. Like John McCain, there is neither any Lib/Prog social agenda he will discount as over-the-top, nor is there any invasion of privacy and personal liberty he regards as 'Too much' if he thinks it connects to national security or turning the populace into an unarmed rabbit warren under the watchful control of police and security agencies.
Cruz was really unmasking the RINOs? Ummm, okay, I'm sure self-immolation of the Right coalition by a stagnant-growth minority faction of that (losing in the last general elections) coalition would be a brilliant strategy in some dimension. I prefer to give him the more-charitable evaluation of "Last great act of defiance" however "Surface" others might regard it.
Flame away, I don't give a shit, I'm done with this thread.