KEN CUCCINELLI may have failed in his quest to become governor of Virginia, but at least he went out with a bang. Ron Paul headlined his last rally, held in Richmond, and here are some highlights from his speech: "I've been working on the assumption that nullification is going to come. It's going to be a de facto nullification. It's ugly, but pretty soon things are going to get so bad that we're just going to ignore the feds and live our own lives in the states." In case you missed it, yes, that is a three-time presidential candidate and 12-term congressman standing up in the former capital of the Confederate States of America, endorsing (or at the very least gleefully anticipating) the nullification of federal law. In that same speech, he noted that "the second amendment wasn't set up there to make sure you could shoot rabbits...Right now we have a greater threat on our liberties internally." He got more specific, warning that "the McAuliffes and the Obamas of the world will come and undermine our liberties". That is Mr Paul coming dangerously close to encouraging listeners to turn their guns on the federal government—the same federal government, by the way, in whose legislature he sat and whose paycheck he took for more than two decades—as well as on Mr Cuccinelli's opponent and the president of the United States in particular.

That is one path that the Republican Party can take. The other, of course, is embodied by Chris Christie, who won re-election in New Jersey with half the Latino vote, one-fifth of the black vote and 45% of voters between the ages of 18 and 29. He beat his Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono, among women, moderates and independents, and also won almost 30% of self-identified "liberal" voters. What's his secret? Well, as Josh Barro writes, it's nothing earth-shattering: he's likable, he works with people from the opposite party and he governs well. That last part is key: when Republican candidates seek office, they are, whether they like it or not, whether they will admit it or not, running to govern. Not to destroy government, not to make speeches about how much they hate government, but to govern.

If Republicans want to win, the Christie path is clearly the right one. After all, Mr Christie commandingly won re-election in a traditionally Democratic state, thanks in part to a strong performance among demographics groups with which Republicans have traditionally struggled. Mr Cuccinelli lost in a traditionally Republican state to a pretty sleazy money-grubber who even Democrats don't much like. But that "if" in this paragraph's first sentence matters. Mr Christie may find it easier to win a general election than he will most Republican primaries, because plenty of Republican-primary voters prefer purity and the fervour of rectitute to pragmatism and the ugly necessity of compromise. As Mr Christie pointed out in his victory/maiden Christie-Rubio 2016 speech, if Republicans want to win they have to "show up in the places where we're uncomfortable". If they don't want to do that, well, they can always head down to the heart of the old Confederacy and wax lyrical about states' rights and armed rebellion.