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To: zeugma
I hardly expect someone like you to understand that

Way to go with pulling out the ignorant, literally, personal attacks. How weak. I won't act in kind. I'll just continue to engage your ideas without resorting to childish insult.

You can "be done" with the two major political parties all you want, but until one is displaced by a new party or transformed into essentially a new party, these are the two major parties that will produce the Presidents of the United States.

I went to great length to make that point. Blathering on about why there needs to be a displacement or transformation of one or both of the political parties, as you have done, in no way supports the idea that simply not "voting for either of the dominant socialist parties" (your terms) will "turn around" this country.

The point of my long dissertation on the history and function of third parties was to refute exactly that. Until a visible, measurable, VIABLE movement to (1) transform one of the existing major parties or (2) displace one of the existing major parties occurs, voting third party is a waste and sure Loserville.

And it does nothing to help create that VIABLE movement. Consistently helping to hand the country over to the worst candidate does nothing to create the viable movement described above.

Nor does recognizing this fact---and asking people with sense to consider actions that, unlike wasting your vote in Loserville, do actually have a chance to create that viable movement---constitute, as you lamely accuse, "cheering on" the parties we have now. Anymore than recognizing that if the Giants and Patriots are in the Super Bowl, either the Giants or the Patriots will win. "Voting" at the Super Bowl for a team that isn't even in the Super Bowl is crazy.

Reality: You don't create a new or transformed major political party in America (which is what is required to win the presidency) by folks going solo, splintering off and voting in onesies and twosies for a whole host of protest candidates. Anymore than, in the Super Bowl above, you change the FACT that either the Giants or Patriots will win by cheering for the Ravens.

Transforming the party or creating a new one DOES NOT START WITH VOTING FOR THIRD PARTY LOSERS IN THE GENERAL ELECTION FOR PRESIDENT. IT ENDS THERE.

If you vote "third party" in the general when there is no "third party" functioning (as our constitutional system necessitates) as one of the major political parties, you are wasting your vote.

The primaries prove this point. There were several more conservative candidates running, but hardly anyone voted for them, and not ONE captured the attention of a significant segment of primary voters anywhere.

Voting for one of those primary losers in the general election, for example, does NOTHING to help transform the party or create a new one. Obviously, hardly anyone voted for those candidates in the first place. Upon what basis would voting for these losers in the general election change anyone's mind? This point goes with even more force to voting for individuals who weren't even in the primaries.

Don't like the two major parties? Fine. But don't delude yourself that throwing your vote to a Third Party Loser in the general election for president is going to change them.

There are ways to transform the parties or create viable new ones (though difficult; again, it's not enough that "third parties" exist; to be viable, they have to have more support than one of the existing major political parties). But wasting your vote on Election Day, and thus indisputably, as throughout history, helping to hand the country over to the WORST candidate is not one of them.

200 posted on 11/11/2008 5:50:11 AM PST by fightinJAG (Who needs the Fairness Doctrine? Obama admits the power to tax is the power to destroy.)
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To: fightinJAG
Way to go with pulling out the ignorant, literally, personal attacks. How weak. I won't act in kind. I'll just continue to engage your ideas without resorting to childish insult.

This comes after calling libertarians "losertarians"? "Physician, heal thyself..."

202 posted on 11/11/2008 6:02:37 AM PST by Dead Corpse (What would a free man do?)
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