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It strikes me that the real hurdle to a serious effort to elect a conservative instead of Mock Rombama will be the inertia of conservatives themselves, as we have seen on this and a ton of other threads.

“There’s no way a third party can win!”

Well, yes there is - if conservatives voted for it.

Remember, conservatives make up the plurality in this country. Conservatives are also not synonymous with “Republicans.” There are conservative independents, and even conservative Democrats. In a situation where you had three serious candidates, you don’t need 50%. You need closer to 40% to have a solid win.

If conservatives actually voted their consciences instead of resigning themselves to Romney, they’d win. The only thing stopping them is this institutionalised mindset. The GOP has them locked into a psychological profile not unlike people who have been in prison for decades. The thought of life outside those four walls scares them. They’d rather stay inside, even if means having no freedom and remaining in the terrible situation they are in. Likewise, a lot of conservatives simply cannot imagine life outside the GOP. it scares them. They won’t step outside of it, even when they’re stuck with a nominee who’s as bad as the Dem.

Let’s face it - fear is what drives a lot of so-called conservatives. Not just fear of Obama, but fear of stepping out and taking a chance. They’d rather play it safe and lose with Romney (does any sane person *really* think Romney has a shot of winning in the end?) than take a chance on switching their vote to a solid conservative third party candidate. They would only do so if they saw a lot of other people doing it, because let’s face it, a lot of conservatives - despite the way they like to pat themselves on the back - are followers, not leaders. They would deny it, but the reality is that they let the MSM and the GOP-E do their thinking for them.

Breaking this in-the-box mindset is the first step to breaking the power of the GOP and electing a real conservative candidate - even if it has to be done outside the GOP.

3rd party’s just don’t work in our system. They mostly never have and they never will. We have a winner take all system that does not allow for coalition government, and that is generally going to result in 2 party’s - as it has in the US since the very beginning. If the GOP grew so weak that it is imploding, you might be able to replace it. But make no mistake, that new party would become the second leg of the 2 party system (with mostly the same people in it). It wouldn’t take long for all the same factions and divisions within this new party to plague it just like it does the Republican party.

Very occasionally you may get a Ross Perot type, but that flamed out and achieved nothing more than to help elect Bill Clinton. You have a few Nader and Anderson types, but all they amount to is potential spoilers. They aren’t going to win, and they know it - these are vanity campaigns.

It is far better off continuing the work of pushing the Republican party to the right from within. It can, and IS being done on the local and state level. People need to quit whining because it hasn’t been a complete success nationally to this point. Romney won the nomination because movement conservatives and Tea Party types were very divided - and MANY sat on the sidelines waiting for Palin who declined to run. By that time primaries were a mess and Mitt breezed through. It isn’t always going to be that way. One thing conservatives do have to do is aggressively court GOOD potential candidates. It is pointless to put up dingbats like Christine O’Donnell characters who not only lose horrible, do damage to the party downticket, but it discourages people from associating with the Tea Party once they see the disasterous results. No more O’Donnells, no more Sharon Angles, no more Carl Paladino’s. These are silly candidates that badly hurt the cause.