Some people just don’t get it. I don’t know if they ignored history or don’t care, but third parties never benefit the GOP... look at every race with third party candidates the dims usually win.
Exactly. I mean Bob thinks what’s left of the GOP will magically disappear and be replaced by a mythical 3rd party, free from original sin. It’s crazy. He has absolutely no concept of how political parties work. As for the Whigs, that was a very tentative organization to begin with, it was formed almost entirely out of the “I hate Andrew Jackson” fan club, most of whom, ironically, tended to agree with him on the bulk of the issues, but just detested his personality. It had drastically divergent interests in it. It was the party of the elites in the South, the “Cotton Whigs” and in the north, it had the more crusading “Conscience Whigs”, opposed to slavery. In some cases, it really didn’t even differ dramatically from some Democrats. The Whigs didn’t even really exist for more than about 2 decades.
Contrast that with the GOP, which is now over 153+ years old. It isn’t just some shaky national outfit that will simply collapse tomorrow just because Bob thinks it’s dead. You have to look at it state by state, and while it’s true that in some states, it is weak (NY), in some, corrupt (IL), and yes, in some dead (like Massachusetts), but in some, it’s quite strong (like my state of TN) and getting stronger.
Conservatives of conscience need to use the GOP as a vehicle for change and reform, because we can’t use the Democrats, and as long as the GOP exists (even in RINO form), a 3rd Conservative party would serve to elect scores more Democrats in districts where they get more than 35-40% of the vote (given 60%+ split two ways, with the GOP/RINO taking, say 20-25% and the Conservative getting 30-35%). Just look, for example, at the 1990 NY Governors race. There was a 3 way race, Cuomo as the Dem getting just roughly at 50% with a RINO getting 1/4th and a Conservative Party candidate getting 1/4th. Had we united behind one strong Republican, Cuomo could’ve been knocked out. Bob seems content to have that nice 30%, which will yield us a House made up of about 400 Democrats and the remaining 35 being either RINOs or Conservatives and 85 Senate Democrats with 15 RINOs or Conservatives. Just brilliant.