RC>IOW, the public prefers to expend its votes on placement of
RC>a competent citizen in position of effectiveness, but will
RC>not expend the same votes to place the same individual in a
RC>position in which 1) he will be ineffective or, at best, a
RC>lame duck or 2) such a vote enables a liberal victory by
RC>splitting conservatives. 
 
      That could be ones view, IF, one is supportive of one of the two
entrenched parties.  I prefer to look at it slightly differently.  The
two major parties have taken turns running the coutry for generations
and have worked together to create the mess we are in.  Neither, in
truth, offers any prospect of sovling the multiplicity of problems we
have today and neither has any answers we haven't heard before.  The
voting public simply shifts back and forth, from one to the other,
hoping for change, but never really getting any.  If change is what is
desired, then the billions of dollars spent annually to prop up support
for the two major parties is going to have to be ingored and people are
going to have to change how they vote.  
 MA> An amazing example of public attitudes. 
RC>Actually, I find such political sophistication reassuring.
 
        Spending a hundred million dollars to buy approval is not
sophistication.  It's marketing.  Given enough advertising dollars
virtually anything can be sold regardless of the quality of the
product.  Had Harry Brown or Ron Paul or Ed Clark spent what Democrats
or Republicans spent, had our congressional candidates spent what these
parties candidates spent, you would see, despite the lock of the major
parties on the political process, heavy inroads into their political
monolopy.  
        We are a small party, but we also have candidates, in many
cases, who are just as qualified, and in some cases, even more
qualified, than their Republicand and Democratic opponents.  The
difference is two fold.  First, the major parties have created an
attitude, bith through law and through indoctrination, to purposely
exclude minor parties thereby retianing their own grip on power, and
second, these parties dip into public coffers to finance themselves and
their campaigns at levels no third party could ever hope to match. 
 
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