Third-party candidacies should be a last resort

There are two sides to this coin.

if 3rd parties remain an exceptional cause - where they are only acceptable as a last-minute, nobody else is even close, we’ve been ignored, etc. solution, no 3rd party will ever gain traction.

But if the republicans believe that they have the right to marginalize their conservative base as a matter of course, then perhaps 3rd parties need to become an everyday solution.

Essentially, the republican party is saying “I know I treat you conservatives like crap, but if I ever do anything REALLY bad, you can use a momentary third party break to ‘punish’ me”. The GOP is relying on stockholm syndrome to keep itself alive.

Any successful break to a third party will necessarily mean a wholesale departure from the GOP as a result of the GOP’s forsaking its base. For those who say it cannot happen, please reconcile that sentiment with the fact that the GOP started as a 3rd party and supplanted the whigs.

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