[OBW]

Harold,

As long as the current two parties survive, the others will be gnats flying around the piles the two big ones are. It will only be with the effective destruction of the units that are the Republican and Democratic parties that there would be any meaningful movement away from them. If they collapse, there will be alternatives provided. And as long as there are at least two significantly different groups formed out of the one, then the crawl to the bottom will begin. We will look more like the British system, or maybe even the German system where there is always some kind of coalition between two of the parties before there is any real change. And sometimes the notion of "strange bedfellows" is very appropriate. It might not always be the most conservative and the second most conservative that gets together (or the other end) it might be the two in the middle, or one of the extremes and the one in the middle but toward the other end.

I kinda wish that were an option.

And 8 years ago I would have been very happy to vote for the McCain/Lieberman ticket. I know that neither was conservative enough for the right or liberal enough for the left. But it often turns out that it is in the broad no-man's land in the middle that real solutions are found.

Alas, it was not to be. And putting Palin on the ticket did nothing to bring the far right into the fold for McCain.

So now it seems they have what they want. And it isn't going to be much better. The GOP has been in the habit of shooting itself in the foot way too often.