In my heart I would LOVE to see a third party flush the GOP down the drain along wit the Dems.
However, the reality of the situation is it is much harder to start a new political party from the ground up than to take over the mechanism of an existing party from the bottom up.
The Communists learned this back in the 1940s and 1950s. They go NOWHERE trying to get people elected. So, instead of continuing down that road, they took over the Democrats from the bottom up.
We must do that with the GOP. By taking over the County and State Committees and local municipal offices, we can strangle the John Boehners and Mitch McConnells and force them out of the party or bend them to our will.
Think about it. Its much more realistic. The Tea Party movement CAN succeed.
I won’t support an option here, but will tell you that the Republican Party insiders resisted the real attempts to take them down by the highly organized Ron Paul forces with great success in 2008-2010-2012.
The GOPe changed rules, changed meeting places, whatever it took to retain control at the grassroots level.
In fact, if such a fight ever does take place, you will know that the “Tea Party” is making waves.
Can a “Tea Party” movement that is in some cases astroturf created by the establishment itself be as strong and committed as the Paulistas to real power and real change?
If “Tea Party” challenges don’t lead to those kind of desperate fights I described above I would suspect if the fight is a real one.
If anything, it seems to me that a real fight that changes things is very uphill. Rand Paul himself and his father seem to have made peace with the GOPe in preparation for Rand’s 2016 presidential run.
In Canada, there was a third party route chosen in the 1990’s and it took a decade for the insiders-business donors to realize they had to make concessions to the grassroots to create a new “Conservative Party” to replace the old “Progressive Conservative Party” there.