Whether you like it or not, whether you support them or not, whether they have a chance of being elected or not because far too many people actually believe that idiocy about "throwing your vote away," it remains a fact that in many, MANY elections, our choices include more than just Scuzzbag R or Scumbucket D. And if our voting for Idealist L (or I, or any other letter besides R or D) means that your Scuzzbag R doesn't get elected, well, perhaps you should have tried harder to civilly persuade us. Certainly Romney and his campaign should have, rather than insulting us and wrongly depriving supporters of other primary candidates from their voices and votes at the convention.
How is voting for a candidate who polls like 5% or whatever of the electorate NOT throwing away your vote?
Sure, you get to feed your ego and run salve all over your conscience because you --
supposedly -- voted for the pure-as-the-driven-snow candidate rather than the "lesser-of-two-evils" or "demo-lite" critter, but what does it really get you beside that? Society is
still left to deal with, in our case, the biggest of the two evils:
OBAMA.
As for trying to "civilly persuade" how the &^^% do you do that with people who blather almost incomprehensibly about "Obamaphone" and how he's so great will Romney is ...what was the descriptor that black woman used in that video? .... scum? Whatever.
She is not civil to begin with. She wasn't even factually correct; it wasn't really Obama who passed out those cellphones; that program was started by Dubya. But we cannot ascribe anything "good" to him, only bad 'cause you see, that's what's PC this era.
If it's BAD then by all means lump it on Dubya's resume of tyrannical deeds but don't hang that millstone 'round the big
O's neck even if he really did do it.
And
trust me, I
never was fooling myself into believing I was ever trying to "civilly persuade." I just calls it like I sees it and if the Devil yells in agony, so be it. And if the Angels start screeching and bawling, so be it.
It is if you want them to vote for a candidate YOU believe should be running the show, rather than for the one THEY believe would be best for that job. Republicans have as a party, over the past several election cycles, proven that they are NOT liberty-oriented - hell, they don't even adhere to their own statements of platform policy! It's on them and their supporters to show why people ought to bother trusting them, and they AREN'T DOING IT.
The above, while actually I agree with to an extent, is hardly any excuse to abandon them to an impossible-to-elect third party. They can be persuaded by those they represent, but when those people run off to the third party the politician will chalk them off and look for others to support him....and if those others aren't so conservative or so true to their platform then the politician will alter his in order to win that support. Thus goes a vicious cycle. We eat our own, and do it very well.
"It is if you want them to vote for a candidate YOU believe should be running the show, rather than for the one THEY believe would be best for that job." 
Don't tell me you wouldn't be doing cartwheels of onanistic pleasure if the candidate you supported
had been elected. I think we all feel that way atleast to a degree. Everyone likes to have their opinions vindicated by general acceptance -- it's an ego thing.
Since I bcame old enough to vote, there has only been one candidate for whom I voted , for whom I ever truly supported -- and even that man was imperfect.
President Ronald Reagan.That's right. And he had once been a supporter of FDR.
But like that or not, Reagan did considerable thinking and writing about what drove him away from FDR, the democrat party, and toward conservativeism.
EVERY other political race since then has been .... well, as I said, "Scuzzbag A" versus "Scumbucket B."
And BTW, my opinion of Reagan is subject to re-evaluation as the situation demands.
"All actual governments are corrupt." ~~ the Roman Tacitus.
