Replies

Thank you, Wallace. My posts get long enough as it is, so I sometimes avoid clarifying detail. But the details you provide are very welcome and enlightening.

A couple of saliant points jump out from your posts. I think these further demonstrate how today's typical "third party" voter gets off track.

Most importantly, is the fact that today a "third party" is not viewed *functionally* as a PARTY at all, but rather, as you term it, "a vehicle for a single politician."

This is another way of stating my point that a new, viable PARTY cannot form simply by finding one candidate and pushing him. A true party apparatus has to emerge first.

A voter who thinks by voting for Ron Paul, for example, (or Ross Perot or George Wallace, in your examples), that he is *helping to CREATE a viable new political party* is simply wrong. There first has to be an actual party that approximates, even if not in size, the apparatus of a major party.

Secondly, you point out that the GOP emerged *because one of the two major political parties had collapsed.* This is exactly what I have been pointing out has to happen for a "third party" to become viable: it must displace or transform from within *one of the TWO major parties.*

In my view, the most plausible scenario for the possible rise of a third party is not the outright collapse of the GOP, but its total transformation from within (just as I gave the example of the old Democrat party being transformed, essentially, into a socialist party). No one can be President without a major party from which to draw his administration and without party affiliation with Congress.

That's why I take most opportunities to push back at the folks who claim they are doing something effective for the country by wasting their vote on a *known [predictable] loser.*

In the end, though, it doesn't matter whether it occurs by displacement (in the event the major party collapses) or internal transformation. But it sure as hell's bells won't happen by folks wasting their vote on presidential candidates who do not represent more than a shell party.

As for this:

However, Obama's leftist background and record may result in such a radical Presidency, making FDR and LBJ look like libertarians in comparison. If that is the case, historical precedence may go by the wayside.

In my view, Obama's leftist background and record (which, in shorthand, I have described as Marxist) should have been sufficient already to at least get conservatives off their butt to vote against him by voting for McCain. Nevertheless, as you can see in this very thread, there are those who still feel no shame or compunction about trumpeting their refusal to vote against Obama, which I view as high political malfeasance.

In short, I wish I could take hope in the idea that Obama will be so bad that maybe people will vote against him in the future, but if even people smart enough to call themselves conservatives couldn't figure that out in THIS election, it's not looking good for the future.