Thoughts on Third Parties

The growing dissatisfaction of the American people with the current Congress and Administration has revived a considerable interest in third parties. In addition to the standard roster of Libertarians, Greens, Communists, Socialists and the like, we are now hearing proposals of Tea Parties, Goooh Parties and more. Rush Limbaugh has railed loudly against third party movements, and Bill O'Reilly thinks they're a good idea. If you agree with the opinion that the current situation has to go, should you support third party movements or not?
Limbaugh and O'Reilly are both wrong, or both right, depending on what form a third party takes. Limbaugh fears the splintering or spoiler effect of minority third parties, a problem that was demonstrated with emphasis in the 1992 presidential election. Conservatives split between the Republicans and Ross Perot's Reform Party, and liberal Democrat Bill Clinton won the race with only 41% of the vote. The underlying fact is that, as long as we have a plurality electoral process that awards the prize to the candidate with the largest vote, the only viable political process is a two party system. Third party candidates only create the risk that a candidate who appeals to less than a majority of the electorate can win.
On the other hand, O'Reilly is right that the current system has enough problems that something new is needed. As implied above, one change would be to require a majority, not a plurality, to win an election, and therefore to resolve elections with no candidate having a majority with a runoff between the top two contenders. This, however, requires a Constitutional change, and therefore is neither a practical nor an immediate solution.
What is proposed herewith is a third party that DOES NOT field a candidate. This is a variation on the 'throw them all out' theme, but with a little more organization and discretion possible. The default objective of the proposed party (we need a name!) would be to end the reign of career politicians. The party would, on occasion, recommend an incumbent for re-election (Democrat or Republican) that adheres to Constitutional government (maybe we could call it the Constitutional Party), but party members would be free to throw them all out if desired. Currently incumbents enjoy a 90% or more re-election rate. A re-election rate of less than 10% would be much healthier for the country.
One subtle argument in favor of this approach is that, for a third party candidate to win, it is necessary to garner at least a plurality of the votes. This is very difficult in the current American political arena, as has been demonstrated many times over the years (e.g., the Perot example above). But since most two party elections in America are fairly close between Republican and Democrat contenders, a relatively small minority could likely swing the result to the challenger over the incumbent. As little as 5% of the electorate could be formidable.
To summarize then, the proposed party would never field a candidate, but would only recommend between the incumbent and the challenger, ususally in favor of the latter. This is much more compatible with the present plurality based system, and should go a long way to break the hegemony of the current career political class. It is worth noting that this proposal basically implements Term Limits without requiring a Constitutional Amendment.
As a final word, in anticipating the argument that it might be risky to throw them all out at once, it should be apparent to most people that the situation couldn't get any worse. Besides, it is only possible to get rid of a third of the Senate in any one election, and the President every other time. It's worth a try! Midterm elections are less than a year away! Let's get all the opposition movements together in objective. This approach works for multiple organizations as long as the primary principle of each is to get rid of career politicians that thumb their noses at the Constitution, Democrat or Republican.