Will the GOP eventually bite the bullet and start nominating "moderates?"

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What is Simmons running for?  He got knocked out in 06 and Shays lost in 08.  At least Rell will get re-elected. 

It's a shame Castle from DE never runs for a Senate seat. 

The problem is, the ones in our party that keep losing are us RINOs.  Smith loses, Sununu loses, Chafee loses, Simmons loses, Shays loses, our 2 Rinos from NH lose (forget their names), and Hagel was forced to retirement. 

Meanwhile, idiots like DeMint are untouchable.  Guys like that are the definition of what's wrong with the party than right.

Simmons is running against Chris Dodd and doing remarkably well so far, one poll had him at 50 and leading by double digits. Though an probably an outlier other polls show him leading by 5 to 8 points which is extremely good this far out against an incumbent.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Now, the fact that he broke 40% in a nat. race (Pres/Senatorial) in MA and against Kennedy?  That's impressive.  I will say that.

... in 1994, and people thought it was going to be a lot closer.

Yes it was just after one of Ted's relatives(can't remember which Kennedy off hand) got in trouble and Kennedy's defense of him reminded people of Ted's past and made them wondered if he had learned anything at all from 1969. There was a poll, I remember seeing it on wikipedia, not sure if still on there though, that showed the race in a tie with a lot of undecideds.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The real reason why the party is failing was already stated: The grassroots Republicans dislike the 'liberalism' of current Republican congressmen and governors, and trust even less the leadership ability of the GOP machine.

You got it. To make it even worse is that both wings see the leadership as being there opposites politically. Moderates see the leadership as being too conservative, while conservatives see them as sellouts. Sometimes the agree on the reasons like lack of competence, over spending, corruption, others they disagree. The problem is we are running moderates and unless they start winning, conservatives are just going to say why bother to run them then and support there own candidates in those cases. You can't argue that we haven't run moderates. The truth is that until the moderates shut up about the platform, they will continue to scare the sh**t out of the social conservatives, the purging will continue.