Re: journalism at the AP.
There aren't too many things funnier than hard-line Democrats lecturing Republicans on what they should do to win. Kind of like mice lecturing cats on the best way to catch and eat mice. Think there might be a tendency to distrust such advice?
Historical fact: the greatest national-level Republican election successes (Reagan, the 94 Congress) were due to the Republicans standing up for solid conservative ideas. Most of the losses involved Republicans who, as the Bible puts it, were "lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold," and the electorate spewed them out.