What is with divided conservatives? Is power more important then principle?

(As rhetorical as it sounds, that's an actual question I'm putting up there)

I've just checked out Oz's current political parties. What really interests me is the state of minor parties at the moment:

• Australian Greens: 20 [(Federal (5), NSW (4), Tasmania (4), Victoria (3), Western Australia (2), South Australia (1), ACT (1)]

• Family First Party: 4 [Federal (1), South Australia (2), Western Australia (1)]

• Christian Democratic Party : 2 [NSW (2)]

• Shooters Party: 2 [NSW (2)]

• Australian Democrats: 1 [South Australia (1)]

• One Nation Party: 1 [Queensland (1)]

• Democratic Labor Party: 1 [Victoria (1)]

Now that's interesting. We have 2 Left-libertarian parties, the Greens and Democrats. The Democrats certainly won't last long, so eventually we'll have just the Greens representing our bloc of the political spectrum. But look at how many conservative parties there are: the FF, the CDP, ONP and DLP. (And the Greens still have more seats then all of those parties combined)

So...why? Why are the conservatives so divided? The CDP and DLP share almost identical social policies, hating feminism and teh gays. The CDP has a clear populist focus on keeping the towlheads out of Australia, which has worked out for them nicely. This has aligned Nile and his posse with ONP and Pauline Hanson's party. The only party that could (at least publicly) reject all of this nationalist hate and remain a solo party is FF, and they could develop a loose alliance.

But even without FF, this leaves us with 3 parties with incredibly similar policies all squabbling over the same voting bloc. Are they more interested in power (ie votes and therefore money) then their principles? There have been death threats against Nile (no doubt stemming from his own religious bigotry), which, given that he has refused to stand down from, hints that he may genuinely be in it for the belief and not just the votes/cash. But that still doesn't explain why Fred just doesn't unite with the DLP and Hanson and just fight for conservative nationalism.

So (again) why do conservatives refuse to unite on such issues? We (left-libertarians) have united under the Greens, so why not the other side? Sure, there's a couple of socialist parties, but nobody (probably not even themselves) takes them seriously anymore. The most logical explanation is that the parties are simply in it for themselves (Pauline certainly seems to be) but that still just doesn't feel right.

So I'm opening this discussion to you fellow soldiers (hopefully I have at least a few by now). If any conservatives want to join, be my guest. You might (and hopefully will) provide a perfectly logical non just-in-it-for-the-votes explanation why conservatives just can't get along as one party.

And if nobody responds...I'll just email it to General Bron.