I can see problems with a third party challenge however. It would likely end up the same way that the ‘Dixiecrats’ did. We might win South Carolina and Alabama with effort, but we’d lose places like Montana.
The issue we have is that the Republican party is a coalition of different people. The religiously active conservatives who want pro-life and traditional marriage amendments pursued, and the more moderate, casual conservatives, who are mainly focused on fiscal issues, worry about the debt etc. One of the problems is candidates voted in by the latter group never serve as fiscal conservatives anyway. Look at Boehner.
The challenge for us is patching together social and economic conservatives in a strong way, whether that means starting a new party and doing some very careful planning, or simply working like hell to completely overthrow the GOP-E in 2014. Getting rid of Boehner would be symbolic.
The way the GOP has been going, we would Win in Montana by a mile.
The social conservatives are going to have to take a back seat in the upcoming several election cycles, because at the rate our fiscal situation is deteriorating, the future of the US is rapidly coming into doubt. It is pointless to worry about social issues if we’ve surrendered our national sovereignty to China and other lending nations, or the economy implodes.
Sadly, the social conservatives are so certain of their moral righteousness that they care more about their moral preening rather than whether or not we still have a country, or we end up under someone else’s thumb, the way Greece now is.