You realize that hundreds of thousands of people vote 3rd party every election cycle - and they always lose. So it seems like a good bet that what you're being told about that is exactly right.
I have reached the point where I would just as soon lose with a third party as lose with Republicans.
There is a difference?
You do realize that every four years, millions of utterly gullible voters sell their souls and blindly cast their votes for the RINO losers of the GOP Establishment. Apparently you are one of them.
Yet you hold out hope that principled conservatives will somehow return to vote for such despicable and worthless candidates as Bush (New World Order) the Elder, Dole (Tax Collector for the Welfare State), Mushball Weathervane McCain and that 2012 utterly unprincipled boob, serial liar and enthusiastic babykiller Romney.
That is all over now. I cannot tell you how liberating it was in 2012 to not vote for either major party candidate for the first time in a long adult life.
Unless and until the GOP comes around, dumps the GOP-E, and nominates a candidate worth voting for, I intend to repeat my non-support for the feckless, brainless, unprincipled $$$cans and their embarrassing POTUS candidates who reflect the corruption of the sorry likes of Boehner, Cantor, McCarthy, McConnell, etc.
As presently constituted, the Republican Party can go straight to hell where it belongs.
As do those, voting Republican.
To Democrats, their drive for dominance and total control of the populace and the wealth it generates is a religious calling and they pursue it with brutal force if necessary.
To Republicans, the quest is not so much for power as it is for riches which can buy the power and they have no core conviction. Try an experiment and ask any given number of Republicans what they stand for and you'll get equal number of different answers and then people wonder why the 'Pubs don't connect. Those political mobsters have no soul, they have no core and believe that election to a political office is a green light to loot the public coffers.