If you don’t vote Republican, you’re a TRAITOR to your COUNTRY, you filthy scoundrels!!!!!
We have lived under a two-party system for over 220 years. You can choose to influence the direction of the country under those fundamental rules of American politics, or choose to ignore those rules and relegate yourself to irrelevancy under the guise of being principled.
I see you chose the latter. I don't hold disdain for you for choosing that path, so long as you recognize what you're doing.
Let's think a little more broadly.
Are you going to vote Whig this November?
No? Why not?
Oh right, they don't exist anymore.
The fact of a two party system in no way defines what those two parties have to be. I'd be happy with destructing the GOP and replacing it with a conservative party that actually has principles.
In fact, there's a good argument to be made that this should happen to parties everyone in a while - be broken up, shaken up, reformed into something else - just to loosen the hold of party elites who inevitably become entrenched and turn the party into their own personal playground rather than allowing it remain a mass vehicle for large portions of the electorate to express themselves (what parties are *supposed* to be).
The GOP had this happen to them back in the 1910s, and then again in the late 1970s, only the shakeups occurred within the party rather than acting to replace it. The Democrats haven't had this happen to them for a long, long time (arguably since the 1880s), which is why they are so much more entrenched and corrupt even than the GOP-E.
However, anytime the watchword becomes "vote for the good of the PARTY" rather than "vote for the principles that made this country," there's a big, big problem. We're facing that now.