Your marginal parties like Green, Libertarian - they, too, are important. When I said in the previous post "The third party in any 2-party system is: your conscience," that is not to dismiss these two, but to uphold them.
Green and Libertarian are each - with respect to their own core issue - the self-appointed party of conscience. They each form a locus, to focus public debate, to lobby for public pressure and to pull as much public will as they can to their key cause. This includes pulling public will from the other two parties, and from those parties' supporters. These marginal parties have strong arguments that effectively pull that will towards their cause, since each of their separate causes affects us all - and each could arguably be called the single most important cause there is. Green stands for planet earth: for defense against wanton rapacity of it, and against the negligence of our stewardship of it. Libertarian stands for humanity itself, and for defense against tyranny by means of the neverending fight to secure the human rights of the individual as paramount.
The Democrats and Republicans each claim to embrace, embody, or be "the real party of" key pieces of each of the Green team and the Liberteam's platforms. The bigs dismiss those marginal parties as irrelevant, small-time players unable to do the real job of a political party because they can't think broadly enough. The littles accuse the big parties of being functionally identical, equally corrupted by their shared hegemony, and unable to effect real good in the most crucially-important areas (two guesses what those are).
The real state of affairs is closer to this: a marginal party can do its part by being a very focused, single-cause party. It can serve effectively as a pressure group to marshall the public will that its single cause's strong merit draws. A marginal party can afford to attack either side as it sees it needs to. It is beholden to no compromise, and if it is well-run and its mission is kept on-focus, then practically speaking, it can serve as the party of conscience - for only its one cause.
A party of conscience occurs everywhere an individual person - a legislator, for instance - unites on an issue with others who believe conscience comes ahead of party. In most cases, one's conscience is perfectly in accord with one's party and its position, and there your party is the party of conscience. For other cases, you find you must cross the aisle, because you believe something bigger is at stake than solidarity with one's party and its official position.
That "something bigger" may be a necessary compromise - to sacrifice something now, in order to secure something urgent for now, but with pains taken to preserve the fight in the future for that point you cede today.
That "something bigger" may also be a real disagreement between one's conscience and a specific party plank. One presumes that if you disagree with your party on most things, you'll leave it.
For those who find that one particular point is always more important than all others, it falls to those thinkers to form up with those of like mind, in a marginal party whose purpose is to dedicate all to that one cause. Together you can make it your mission to be - on that one point - the "party of conscience," as you see fit. Not everybody's going to agree with you, but at least they will know what you stand for. Also, good news: there's probably already a marginal party in place, for whatever cause seems all-important to you. If not, you can start one, but why do all that work if there's already one going?
Now if the Green party and the Libertarians could only see eye-to-eye on this whole climate-tax deal, together, with that combined pressure - maybe we could force those damn big-timer Redempublicrats to come off the dime!
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