I don't know who would win, but I'd easily vote for OSR. I wouldn't agree with a number of his policies, but I think if elected to public office, he'd work for pragmatic solutions to urgent problems.
Your moderate heroism has given me cancer and it slowly spreads to all my vital organs.
Well, American politics would significantly improve if there was way more moderate heroism in Washington and elsewhere. It would actually function to get things done instead of hackery, finger pointing and insults. Moderate heroism to me doesn't mean selling out just every belief and giving up all convictions, it means arguing about issues, both between and within executive and legislative branches as well as on the campaign trail. Questioning the other side's judgment and not motives. Sometimes it's necessary to take a stand when you don't come together, but the system for a reason requires compromise and current leaders, especially on the right, lost the ability to compromise and get meaningful things done. Not even those, that shouldn't even be subject to major debate.
If Republicans would get rid of the extreme elements and be like OSR, Washington would be a much better place. And if they were in charge, I wouldn't like everything, but I would much rather see Democrats arguing on the issues and get a majority for other policies. For that reason, I'd be supporting him over a socially conservative Democrat like Smith, although my vote is more pro-OSR than anti-Smith.
My problem with your reasoning is that the real difference between "extreme elements" within the Republican Party and the "responsible" ones mostly lies in style, not actual policies (at least not it's core). For this reason I'm greatly disturbed with the presently perpetuated myth that the GOP was somehow more a "sane" party before "Trump hijacked it", but we've seen how "respectable" Republicans like McCain, or even supposedly "centrist" ones like Collins behaved during the Obama administration. As far as at least 90% of actual policy is concerned, McCain/Collins-type Republicans and Trump/DeSantis-type Republicans are the two sides of the same coin.
Now, speaking of OSR specifically, granted, there are some actual differences between
some his positions and positions of Trump-style Republicans, but policy-wise a sane Democrat should still vote for L. D. Smith, whom I wouldn't necessarily describe as "conservative". I myself I'm to his left for sure, would probably prefer a more left-wing candidate in primary, but in the GE I'd vote for him with full enthusiasm. The idea of voting for a Republican "to encourage less extreme elements within the party" over a perfectly reasonable Democrat doesn't make sense from policy standpoint. If one votes this way, then we take policies away and focus on pure personality.
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