Progress may also be defined as (1) increasing LP vote totals, or (2) spoiling an election for Bush, which would bring greater news media attention and financing, and thus votes, over the long term.
At this point, I'd like to see a GOP Congress and Kerry presidency. I hated Clinton, yet in retrospect, a gridlocked Clinton was better than Bush currently is. So I'm hoping for a gridlocked Kerry, rather than a Bush win.
And if the LP manages to throw the election to Kerry, so much the better. It'll mean that the GOP ignores us at their peril.
Progress comes in two flavors:
1. Progress for the Libertarian party starts with building a local base. If you don't have a majority on city council, how can you expect to get a majority in a state legislature? Until you can show that you know how to govern, rather than to object to government, you're not going to get my vote, EVEN THOUGH I AGREE WITH MOST OF YOUR POSITIONS. If you want my vote, start at the local level, where I'm more willing to take chances. Build upward. If you look at the story of parties, that's how they work.
2. Spoiling an election does bring greater media attention. But I haven't seen Ross Perot's vote totals for his party RISE over time: indeed, most people that voted for him for exactly the reason you outline regretted it, and vowed never to get taken in that way again. You are not helping yourself to win people over when your first action is to declare, "I'm against you."
3. To the extent you are counting on a "coalition mentality" inside the GOP, it's there. But it is a coalition INSIDE the GOP. If you're outside of it, and you want in, that means supporting some of their goals in return for them supporting some of yours. It's called politics. What you are advocating looks more like a bully's "If I take your lunch money often enough, maybe you'll just give it to me one day."
4. Finally, with regard to priorities and progress: the US is currently facing an international situation in which we have people who want to kill us in order to go to heaven. I'm in favor of killing them overseas before they get here. It is more important to me than some of my other domestic priorities. So I am willing to compromise them, knowing that looking helpless before someone with that idea is a mistake.