The above line simply isn't true. A vote for whichever candidate is a vote not for any of the other candidates. So, if someone votes Libertarian or some other 3rd party, then their vote is recorded for that party.
That said, I don't think it is necessarily a sound strategy if that is what it's intended to be. Romney demonstrated the worst in strategic thinking when he wrote off social conservatives and went after moderate liberals instead. It was a big, fat fail. So, in elections, strategies fail or they succeed. It's seldom that one sees some kind of middle ground. A moral victory suggests an otherwise fail.
What to say about the strategy of voting 3rd party in protest as a strategy? What is the goal of the strategy? The most obvious is the hope that the losing party will see the electoral failure of their rejection of principle and amend their ways and return to their core principles.
There is only one measure of the success of that strategy, and that is results. Has that happened or hasn't it? If it hasn't then there are 2 choices that I see: (1) A movement to take over the party, or (2) moving one's registration in actuality to a different and/or new party.
And if that doesn't lead to a return to core principles, what remains is becoming "a voice in the wilderness crying 'prepare the way of the Lord'."
The reality is that perhaps 5, certainly less than 10 people in DC are remotely conservative. The Republican party is fully RINO and hates us. You don’t fix that. you leave it and form/join with others like you and fight them as you would a Democrat. The cards will fall where they may.
But we can’t ‘fix’ this. And we all need to stop deluding ourselves the GOP will come around or that ‘we’ will hold feet to fire. Thats what all these rinobots said every election and screamed whenever anyone tried to.
GW Bush was an imperfect candidate and president, his “compassionate conservatism” annoyed me because it implied that conservatism isn’t almost always the more compassionate course in real terms. It signaled his discomfort with conservatism. He spent far too much energy reaching across the aisle for support, in fact a look at his budgets shows he was buying what support he got from the other side of the aisle. And got nothing from them in terms of respect.
On a human level, I love the guy. As a president I am grateful it was he rather than the clown prince who was in office when the jihadists hit the Twin Towers. And otherwise, conservatives had to fight him every step of the way. And because its hard to fight one of your own, we wound up watching while the budget balooned far beyond what was demanded by the war. I always assumed he was purchasing Democrat support for the war by rubber-stamping everything they demanded.
So, were we right to vote for Bush over Gore, with all his flaws? A thousand times yes. With all his flaws we were fortunate to have a moral man in office when the Towers came down.
So would you rather fight a GW, who is trying to do right, or a Gore? Would you rather fight a Romney, who or an Obama?
I can see where this is all going. The Jeb Bush crowd are prepping us for their guy, who essentially holds us in contempt, trying to shame us into supporting their guy. If you put him up against Hillary, and factor in the possibility of another 911, who would we rather have in office when the bad stuff happens? Clearly not her.
But wouldn’t we rather have someone in office who doesn’t hold us in contempt?
The next few months on FR are going to be non-stop war between the Jeb proxies and the Hillary proxies, alternately shaming us into supporting him, versus demands that purity requires us to sit out the election for the sake of principle.
True of the Republican Party since the time of Teddy Roosevelt, who was a Liberal, with the exception of Calvin Coolidge and possibly Ronald Reagan. The truth is, Conservatives, especially committed Christians, have not been welcome in the Republican Party for over 100 years. To be sure Conservatives were not very much of a problem before 1980. They didn’t say much and weren’t very active except for their money and their vote before then.
We should live OTOH, as though He will not return at any time in our lifetimes but also as though He were returning today. should we not? No one will know when in advance on the face of this Earth.
In any event, may God continue to bless you and yours!