I'm trying to figure how that theory pans out; I certainly understand voting based on principle only, but I can't see how that's gonna make a damn bit of difference to the party at large. Romney won tons of votes in the primaries from people who identfied themselves as Tea Party members - they had the choice between the candidates and still picked Romney (I voted for Santorum).
How is voting third party on the Presidential line going to identify us as conservatives angry enough at the GOP to vote for someone else? Won't the media, etc., just assume Obama had more voters show up?
The total votes in each party are always tallied and analyzed against how many people were eligible to vote, how many voted before and polls are taken ad-nauseum about who you did or didn’t vote for and why. They do that in every precinct in the country. The press may not publish and comment on all those results but the GOPe will certainly get them and pore over them to see what happened.
It won't.
What will is voting the presidential line and voting for conservatives down-ticket. Change is grass-roots, bottom-up.
We have to teach people to distinguish between turf and astroturf.
-PJ