“The Democrat Party has from 55 to 60 million loyal voters. To be anything but a feel good exercise, a Conservative Party would have to attract at least that number.”
No we do not. We just need enough congressmen, who do not answer to the GOP leadership. We do not need to match the GOP or Dems in size. We only need enough to prevent them from ever having a majority without coming to our block to cut a deal.
And when they come, we play hardball. If they try to neutralize us, we vote with the other side until they beg us to come back.
We could become brokers and paralyze them. Think of this. What if the GOP had 200 seats, the Dems had 195, and we had 40.
If the GOP acted nasty, we could even threaten to join with the dems to have a dem speaker that WE selected.
We could leverage a handful of congressmen into a lot of power. Both sides would come begging. It would be merry hell.
How will this party get even 1, let alone 40?
As a dream, the idea of a conservative party sounds interesting but in reality a party consisting of 30 to 35 percent of the current republican party would be unable to elect a candidate in any national or statewide contest and would be hard pressed to even win in a congressional district. It would, however, insure the total domination by the democrat party.