OK, point taken.
On the other hand, I trust that you acknowledge that it's also a popular tactic to abuse the above said card, even going so far as funding a Green or Constitution or Libertarian Party in order to merely syphon votes away from your competitor.
I do think it gets abused, and I think the above scenario is just one motive. Some folks get off on the ego-ride of playing politics. Some are just ornery. The latter is the reason I was a Libertarian for ten years, but I put that aside long ago.
There are also those folks who entertain the fantasy that they can grow a third major party, failing to realize that in democracies (and democratic republics), party systems are molded by electoral systems. Communist systems nurture one party; parliamentary systems nurture many; and ours, uniquely, gets two.
