The Buckley Rule on voting: Vote for the most conservative *electable* candidate. Sure it’s narrowly circumscribed - every President since Lincoln - that’s been 150 years now - has been Republican or Democrat.
If you want to influence the outcome, you choose D or R. Voting 3rd party is just a no-op protest vote.
The Constitution Party got under 1% of the vote in 2008, a year when a worse RINO than Romney headed the GOP ticket - McCain. Romney is more conservative than McCain, enough so that real conservatives like Marc Levin back in 2008 were grasping at Romney as that conservative alternative to McCain. If you could tell that the Pubbie was more conservative than Obama in 2008 you can tell certainly that in 2012.
If Obama werent a jobkilling socialist ready to circumvent the congress and constitution and presiding over the impending bankrupting of our nation, I’d say ‘go for it’ wrt 3rd party, but giving Obama 4 more years is playing with fire. I cannot in good conscience let that happen to my children, or for that matter any American family.
Anyone But Obama therefore requires voting Republican.
No, if you want to influence the outcome, then you take the game away from the GOP-E and the rest of the politicos who have gamed it to their advantage.
As it stands now, "choosing D or R" is not exercising influence. It's exercising no choice at all. Thinking that it is is merely an illusion based on wishful thinking.