> Voting is often not a rational utility maximization choice, but a symbolic
> ritual affirming conventional sentiments, similar to professional wrestling
> or church attendance. People who rarely follow religious teachings in
> their everyday lives, nonetheless go to church on Sundays.
If this is the answer to Kel's question "why does anyone vote at all?", then any idealogical based third party, whether the Greens or the Libertarians, is doomed to failure.
The trick, I guess, is to embrace the ritual itself, and to become a third party that appears no different. Is Jesse Ventura radical? Don't sell the third party based on the differences, sell it by the similarities. After grasping power, then become radical.
This politics - it's dirty business.
Matt
-- Matt Cramer <cramer at voicenet.com> http://www.voicenet.com/~cramer/ There are only two kinds of artists: the plagiarists and the revolutionaries.
-Paul Gauguin