No, unity wasn't the issue. I was in almost daily contact with both JBrase and Dallasfan65 over the last month and a half, and we have the new board where we interact on the private forum. There was no lack of communication or coordination between the two of us.
And tmth is right, it is difficult to maintain the parties as two separate entities. If anything, the Reaganfan/Dead0man ticket should serve as a warning against such a unification, and that was just over "coordination". There is no way I could bring the entirety of each party together into one and maintain the unity, cohession, and level of discuss that currently exists within each.
It's hard enough to have two parties. Looking at the last election, what we really need now is loyal party members who won't backstab the party, both in the POP and RPP. That could have at least saved us a couple Senate seats.
I don't know if we could call it backstabbing, but there are certainly a greater diversity of ideas on the right than on the left. While the JCP never strays from the party line, RPP members and the occasional POP member votes for the left leaning ticket. That's not a bad thing, but in close elections, it tips the scale in favor of the left candidate. It seems the only way the right is to win an election is for the mood to be just right, like when afleitch won, otherwise the left winning is a foregone conclusion because we know how many votes they'll get each and every election. There are never any surprises.
Certainly, we have to keep Moderates, Conservatives and Libertarians happy just to get to 48%. They just have to unify the left and center left and they are at 50%. Why the JCP ever doubts their chances in any elections is the only mystery here. They have a structural advantage ideologically.