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Versus the third party doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell yet? Whatever our conservative political leanings, conservativism is dead if the liberals take control. And don't give me the RINO talk. We will have a greatere chance of true conservative reform with the republicans as we would with the democrats.

Then show me a Republican Party that walks the walk when it talks the talk.

Do you really believe Dashcle will advance a conservative agenda with a stronger liberal senate given to him by a third party vote?

I'm not entirely certain whether I will go the third party route again myself, but do you really believe that anyone is responsible for a Senate (or House) majority becoming Democratic other than those who vote explicitly for the Democrats? If you didn't vote for the Democrat, you're not responsible if they take the majority. Period-dot-period.

Get real if you think that a third party will advance conservativism right now. The third party will happen if and only if the republicans wimp out with a majority.

What do you mean, if? Or only? It has been done. We had a solid Republican majority on Capitol Hill that could have and should have stopped the Clinton Administration stone cold dead; we had a Republican Party in better than strong enough position to throw him out on his big fat ass in the 1996 election when he was prime and ripe for a knockout punch...and they wimped. Big time.

The power a politician acquires for government will survive long after his photo opportunities have been forgotten. People must realise that the government in recent years has become far more of an enemy to their rights and liberty. People must recognise that government is now the most dangerous predator.

The vast majority of government agencies can neither be reinvented nor reformed. If Americans want good government, hundreds of failed government programs must be abolished and legions of laws that turn government into a public nuisance must be repealed. All other "reforms" will merely prolong the abuse of the American people.

- James Bovard, in "feeling your pain": The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years, a book that should have been required reading for anyone deigning to exercise his or her right to vote in 2000.

Until then, it ain't going to happen. I'm a realist, and reality says it won't happen. Not with a liberal house. At least the republicans will have a say in who heads the committees. We can work on the RINO's after that. We will never be able to root out liberals with a liberal house and senate. They have too much power. Now is our opportunity to change. I really wish those who feel otherwise could see the big picture.

"Now is our opportunity to change." Now, where have I heard that before? "I really wish those who feel otherwise could see the big picture." Now, whom have I heard tootling that horn before? (Hint: He and his minions tootled it so far beyond its tolerability that he was lucky to escape from the Speaker's chair with his skin still attached to his skeleton after the 1998 seat losses on the Hill.) That attitude, and those "big picture" compromises (like the 1995-96 farm bill; like the subsequent budgets in which Republicans - who were supposed to know better; not for nothing has David Frum said, Of course God made conservatives and Republicans, to keep the liberals and the Democrats from spending us into oblivion - were not only proffering budget increases beyond what even the Droopy-Drawers Administration would ask but had the absolute nerve to say that merely making the spending increases a little less than the last spending increases were actually budget cuts, with only too many people fool enough to believe them) are what turned a solid Republican Hill majority into one hanging in the balance now.

I would not vote for a Democrat even with a gun at my back. (Well, maybe if Sam Ervin was alive, I'd vote for him, as indeed would I vote for anyone who said and believed The Constitution should be taken like mountain whiskey - undiluted and untaxed.) But I am fed up to the proverbial teeth with Republicans (Ron Paul and his small but imperative Republican Liberty Caucus being honourable exceptions - underline exceptions) talking the talk and not walking the walk. How much longer before they finally get it? And what will the damage prove at last to be when (if?) they finally get it?

We do not owe any political party a damned thing. Serious parties (George F. Will said this once) try to shape as well as seduce the nation. If anything, all things considered, it is the Republican Party who owes us a full and proper account as to why they talk the talk but do not walk the walk; as to why they have failed to do their alleged job of reconstituting, upholding, and defending freedom, individual rights and sovereignty, and properly construed government (government whose sole legitimate business is to stay the hell out of your business, my business, every citizen's business, unless - big unless - a) one citizen would obstruct or abrogate a fellow citizen's equivalent rights, and b) another nation would obstruct or abrogate our legitimate rights as a sovereign nation) as opposed to the improperly consecrated State. An account...not excuses.

We do not owe any political party a damned thing. Serious parties (George F. Will said this once) try to shape as well as seduce the nation. If anything, all things considered, it is the Republican Party who owes us a full and proper account as to why they talk the talk but do not walk the walk;

You are right -- we do not owe any political party a damned thing. That is not why I stay in it. However it is serious people -- not parties -- who try to shape as well as seduce a nation -- it's not the other way around as George Will states. The majority of the Constitution loving people are in the Republican party. Therefore, there is no reason to leave it. The best you can achieve is concentrating the same mass of Constitution lovers elsewhere and that ain't going to happen anytime soon. Meanwhile what you get is dilution. The best course is to change the remaining people in the Republican party and then the remaing people in the electorate.

If you can't win a Republican primary with ideas and principles derived from the Constitution, then you will never be able to win a general election based on these same principles.