Republican primaries

Reading yet another article about the very public scrambling by various Republican elected officials to find a comfortable place to stand amid various social earthquakes (notably, legalizing same-sex marriage), I was confronted yet again by the conventional wisdom: running for office requires steering hard right in the Republican primaries. This is based on more conventional wisdom, that primaries tend to draw only the most hard-core, far-right voters in the GOP.

It strikes me that the Republican Party might want to consider trying to motivate more than just the hard-core to vote in its primaries. Then maybe that oft-mentioned but not oft-seen bulk of the party might get candidates that don't embarrass it in the general election.