And yet they still vote for candidates with known public positions that are contrary to their own!
There is no candidate that does not hold policy positions contrary to at least some my own.
What they've done is decided that this issue is less important than others, and based their votes on that.
Of course not. As you say, it's clearly not a significant issue for most Republican voters.
However, I think a lot of voters assume that the party reflects the values of the voters though - clearly that is not always true.
And this is at best -- it assumes your elected representative even holds their campaign promises, which is maybe a long shot.