It’s really too bad though that we can’t have a viable third or fourth party system ..
The principal is sound, but three parties just cannot work. It would give the elections to the weakest candidate about 60% of the time in my opinion.
If a large enough block of voters can leave the Republican party to form a party more powerful than the current pubbie party, then why not stay in it and change it?
In one of the few times he was mistaken William F. Buckley Jr. pushed this kind of approach by saying that what we needed to do was go over to a parliamentary system.
This is the wrong approach. Here's why.
In a large Republic such as ours, it isn't going to be possible to get all conservatives or all conservative leaning people to agree on everything. [The same thing is going on with the Leftists right now.] In a multi-party system, that means you must invariably make alliances with like minded parties. It also means that voters don't know, in advance, what kind of government they're going to wind up with, even as late as election day; they must wait until the governing coalition is assembled after the votes are all counted.
You can bemoan the lack of purity in the present system all you like, but if you're a well-informed voter you at least know going into the election what you're going to wind up with before you cast your vote.
Our way is better.
Imagine what would happen if the RINOs or Blue Dogs started their own party, and a handful of votes in the tail could routinely wag the dog, even after you'd picked your guy. That is the reality of a multi-party system.
Then the winner would have 30% of the vote...
You want a parliamentary system, move to France. The food and wine are great, and you get a lot of vacation time.
You just check your personal liberty at the door.