If you're going to go this way, I humbly suggest you look over the current minor parties that offer a conservative alternative (eg., Constitution Party) and find out why they failed to click with millions. Once you find out what's stopping them, you'll know what traps to avoid - and when to call it a day if those traps prove to be unavoidable.
If you have Ross Perot in the back of your mind, please keep in mind that he's a supersalesman. He started up EDS because, as an IBM salesman, he met his full-year quota in a few weeks! And as a result, he was told to take it easy for the rest of the year by IBM management. Declining, he started up EDS and made a mint selling computer time-share services.
Here's the point. Ross Perot did not invent the computer. He did not invent time-sharing. Instead, he brilliantly marketed the two. That's his strength: marketing and selling a product that's already been put in place for him to sell. He managed to see ways that computers and time-sharing could make his customers more productive, and he ginned himself up to believe in his solutions passionately. That's what good salespeople do.
When he ran in '92, he needed a platform. He needed a platform that he could sell the h*** out of. As a natural marketer, he figured out quickly that the best "product" would aim at the centre. It would have to be one that appealed to both Republicans and Democrats. It would have to be a platform that would be eagerly welcomed by disgruntled conservative and disgruntled moderates and liberals. He needed all three as a "prospect base" in order to maximize his campaign's appeal.
And, of course, he needed a single theme to knit his program together. A single concept is much easier to sell than a bullet-point list.
So, his platform had to have:
Perot aimed at the centre. He aimed at the centre because that's where the most prospects were. That's why, before his meltdown, he was a serious contender. He aimed at the centre with a very enticing populist twist, which made both established parties look ineffectual as well as "ideological." He eschewed any policy that could be credibly tarred as "extreme" by his opponents.
So...if your third party idea is going to get off the ground, you'll all but have to aim at the centre. You have to make a home for disgruntled liberals and moderates as well as conservatives. You need a single policy, like Perot's protectionism, that ticks off both Democrat insiders and Republican insiders. One that gets splutters out of establishment conservatives as well as establishment liberals, like Ross Perot's protectionism did. That way, you can position yourself as offering a middle way between the two extremes. As an anti-ideologue battling two parties full of ideologues. As someone who can cut through the liberal nonsense and the conservative nonsense. Unless you have both, you've cut yourself off from most of your prospects and are likely to fall into the "splinter party" or "too extreme for the extremists" trap.
And...in order to reach that goal, you have to eschew any policy that would scare off disgruntled moderates and disgruntled liberals. You have to get to them all, as did Perot in his heyday.
As I hope I've indicated, it's a tall order - and likely requires a supersalesperson to see it through.
There are two great coalition parties each striving to get 50%+1 vote! Nothing more than that.
Within the parties are factions that make up the coalition. These factions represent political, social, economic, national, geographic, industrial and agricultural interests of all kinds.
perogie wasn't appealing to a real middle ~ he was appealing to factions in whole or in part already well ensconsed inside the Democrat and Republican parties.
He touched some nerves and got some votes. The electoral vote system more or less ignored him and turned Billzo into a president with access to more women than he'd ever imagined in his life.