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Well, Fruitbat, let me tell you, if you are serious about building a third party in America, you have to focus on the important things, and stage management isn't what gave John Anderson 9% of the vote and Ross Perot 19% in 1992. Perot was polling above 50% in California before he withdrew from the race. THAT is what cost him a better showing in the election. Not Stockdale, not his voice, not his politics. My memory is surprisingly good for the details that matter.

If you want to start a third party, you need to pull up a chair and listen to somebody like me. For starters, you need to focus on the Midwest and California, because these are the two most politically disaffected regions in the country, the places worst served by the present two-party system. They are the two places that will (and have, in the case of Anderson and Perot) reached for a third party alternative.

The South is not going to spontaneously abandon the Republicans, and the Northeast is not going to abandon the liberal Democrats. You can't start there. You have to start where you can build up a powerful head of steam and become a regional power which others from outside then look at.

Any American third party that eventually succeeds will have its first victories in the Midwest and in California.

The next thing you have to do is to have a SHORT list of policies. The Constitution Party folks are well-meaning people, but they have a laundry-list platform, 80% of which is sane, 20% of which sounds whacko. The problem with ideological purity is that it forces you to take positions on things that you should just shut up about because they hardly matter, except to a narrow few ideologues, but they make you sound nuts.

Ross Perot successfully avoided that pitfall. He focused on globalization and the loss of American manufacturing jobs, on corruption and on government spending. Those who opposed him, of course opposed him, but PLENTY of people agreed with him and gave him a hearing.

Contrast that with the Constitution Party, whose website proudly tells us that they want to repeal the 17th Amendment and take away the democratic vote for Senators. This is la-la land stuff.

Make a laundry list platform of strange ideological hobby-horses and you are going to be a crank party on the fringes. Instead, you have to FOCUS. How did the Republican Party replace the Whigs? One issue: Slavery. Slavery was such an overwhelming moral imperative, that other issues paled beside it.

Political parties are not there to educate the unwashed masses in miniscule fine points of constitutional theory. That's what the Constitution Party Platform does. It's noble. And it's pathetic. People don't want a civics lesson, especially not a cranky one. What they want is fundamental changes.

The third thing you have to do is identify broad constituencies that are likely to share your view and vote for you. This all ties into issue spotting. Now, as soon as you do this, you are going to alienate others. All things to all people might work (for awhile) if your the party in charge handing out largesse, but it's hopeless if you're trying to get there.

So, what are the great issues of frustration in America, that lots of people, especially in California and the Midwest, feel are unaddressed:

(1) Uncontrolled immigration.
(2) Export of Jobs.
(3) The neo-isolationist desire, in general.
(4) Health care and pensions.

So, you propose, in order, a fence, no tax deductions for foreign labor, substantial pullback from the rest of the world and the UN, shoring up social security, and universal health insurance coverage.

That's a platform that will win you federal and state offices in the Midwest, and in California with a properly photogenic candidate.

Start opposing democracy on principle or other damnfool ideas, and you're headed for the fringes. Focus on the issues, and even without a champion, you can build a party.
Then champions will come, like Perot, and you can build a party faster.