I have said repeatedly that people need to quit whining about 3rd parties and look to the crappy candidates if they lose.
/johnny
Why the huge defense for 3rd parties? Sometimes the 3rd party independent candidates ARE the cause of a Republican defeat in a plurality election.
Here's an example. Last year in Wisconsin, an out-of-state Tea Party group and other purportedly conservative independent national groups supported a 2012 Senate primary candidate - Mark Neumann - whom local Wisconsin conservatives had rejected as phony.
In 2010, Neumann was badly losing the Republican primary race for governor and objected to the GOP convention endorsing his opponent. Neumann even threatened to run to the left as a 3rd party candidate in the general election against now-Gov. Scott Walker.
Neumann resurfaced in the 2012 Senate race and was directly responsible for GOP-e former governor Tommy Thompson winning the primary with a 35% plurality of the vote. The other 3 candidates, 2 actual conservatives and Neumann, split the majority conservative primary vote. If Neumann had simply dropped from the race when it became evident he could not win, Wisconsin's GOP Senate nominee and likely current junior Senior would have been a conservative private businessman.
Let VA elect their own candidate and if they want to whine about the 3rd party causing a defeat, let them. It's their state. Besides, their whining about 3rd parties being harmful could be accurate!