Oh, dammit...I just wrote a big long post, and it was erased by an automatic logout causing me to accidentally cancel posting it. BLAH.
The current RNC knows something that a lot of the "third partiers" here don't, and it's the same thing torchbearer and many others are trying to get across:
The two-party system is not an accident. It is INHERENT to plurality voting. There is literally no getting around it without changing the election laws. There have been occasions in the past where a third party has replaced another upon division and implosion, but the two-party system always reasserted itself, because the laws weren't changed. Moreover, major parties never implode by being destroyed from the outside: Instead, it's always internal division that breaks them apart and momentarily destabilizes the two-party system. That's what we're doing with the Republican Party: If we take over, the best case scenario is that we disenfranchise the neocon ringleaders and become a major party. The worst case scenario is that they successfully split and set up a third party...and that would be the precise moment at which other third parties might, just might, have a brief window where they can win enough seats to make a difference.
Unless the establishment itself uses its full might to create a third party, third party chances are much more limited: It takes years and years, even decades, of mounting discontent with the two-party system to give a single third party enough gains in consecutive elections for them to overtake a major party "from the outside." This is not happening today, and it has not happened for the 40 years the LP has been around, because it's not how voters work...the two-party system is too inherent to plurality voting. Voter education doesn't work, because the vast majority of people do not have rational enough personality types to listen to us until they see us as winners, or until they've become humbled enough to open their minds to rational argumentation. Until then, far too many people will continue to vote for politicians like they bet on horses, no matter how many educational efforts we put forth...and the non-voters who comprise the majority of the country? They're not withdrawing their consent from the system. They're just too apathetic to care, or too lazy to try...a laziness which certainly extends to much more personally demanding non-political approaches like any attempt at tax revolt.
Voting for third parties in general elections is great for protest votes and hopes and prayers that a party shift will eventually arise from public discontent, but placing all of our bets on it would be foolish. We'd need a "secret billionaire" - a repeat of Ross Perot - to shake things up suddenly enough to win a Presidential election...but guess what? Ross Perot didn't effect any real change beyond his own election year, and even within that year, there wasn't enough crossover to other elections (e.g. Congress and Senate) to make a difference. Even if he won - even if Ron Paul won - winning a Presidential election is NOT ENOUGH TO SAVE US. We could briefly end the wars, temporarily invalidate executive orders, veto new bills, and change the priorities of executive departments and agencies for a few years, but without Congress on our side, we could not actually change voting laws to permanently make third parties viable, so any changes we could effect would necessarily be temporary until things reverted back to the terrible norm.
We barely have the resources to fund a handful of liberty candidates at once, so going the third party route, we simply do not have the resources to take over Congress. If we want third parties to be viable, we need to change the voting laws to get rid of plurality voting...and we cannot muster up enough support to do that with a third party approach.
The RNC knows ALL of this. The establishment has deliberately set up the third party avenue as a dead-end for dissidents. They offer us the temptation of "taking our ball and going home," but the LP's dismal track record over the past 40 years shows exactly where that leads...nowhere. It's emotionally easy to give up on the GOP and rationalize it by saying "they're too corrupt to associate ourselves with their brand, and too corrupt to let us take over." The latter is demonstrably wrong, considering we've already taken over some state chairs...but giving up on the GOP out of spite would still be more emotionally appealing. We wouldn't have to rub shoulders with the corrupt and feel tainted by it. We could sit at a safe distance and pontificate instead of suffering through emotionally devastating, up-close-and-personal uphill battles with sociopaths in the same room. We wouldn't have to fight hard to gain ground and keep it, and instead we could pin our hopes on third party miracles...but we wouldn't get anywhere, and the state would still continue killing and pillaging.
Actually accomplishing something means going toe-to-toe with the enemy. Doing this requires a lot of courage, perseverance, and a thick skin. It's emotionally difficult, and the RNC is exploiting this to try to get us to give up and go back to third parties, where we can safely be ignored. I'm voting for Gary Johnson this fall, don't get me wrong...but giving up on the GOP for third party activism is not going to get anywhere. Neither is agorism, because the government will always have above-ground businesses to tax, since they're the only ones with the productive capacity to maintain civilization. Purely educational efforts are already facing diminishing returns, because only a small subset of people have the personality and open-mindedness to listen to reason without it being accompanied by victory and social proof. The vast majority of people are too biased and too emotional to see reason without first having an emotional incentive to do so. (In fact, the same applies to a lesser extent here, as evidenced by the very fact that people continue to push the third party route despite all the rational arguments against it, and as evidenced by people handwaving away the gains we've made in the GOP by pointing to every setback as definitive proof of futility.) Now, taking over every state GOP and then the RNC? That's going to make waves. It's hardly the last battle we'll have to fight, and we'll continue to face resistance during and after such an effort, but it's the best strategy we've ever had. It's the only even remotely viable strategy we've ever had, and it's the only one where we've ever gained significant institutional ground. We can drive the neocons from the GOP, as long as we don't let them emotionally manipulate us and drive us from it first...but I see too many people here trying to convince others to give into the RNC's bullying.
Having any of those people and most of the co-opted Tea Party would make me run even farther away from the GOP. Seriously you are talking about people who voted for people who support neverending war and the Patriot Act. Please explain to me how they would be securing the Constitution from further destruction?
