November is coming, and if you’re not on board with getting Republicans elected, it may well be you need to approach the topic from a fresh direction.

As someone who stopped being a Republican loyalist in 2008 and will never be dumb enough to become so again, I can understand anyone with a third party point of view.  I don’t regret voting for Barr over the two Democrats running against one another in 2008.  However, I was missing a bit of perspective, and it’s simply this:  You don’t have to be a Republican loyalist to back Republican candidates.

There is a third way.  A strategy where independent and third-party conservatives might back Republicans without having to  acknowledge their useless establishment leadership has a point.  Think of the mindset as The Republican Two-Step.

Step One is where the bulk of the focus is now.  Support and vote for conservative Republicans, and no, the term is not redundant as anyone who’s ever cursed a RINO can tell you.  Get your kinds of candidates through the primaries and then win the general elections.  RedState is good at pointing people at those sorts of candidates, and any number of other conservative blogs are all over this now.  The Tea Parties are good with getting them through primaries, but this is all common knowledge.

That’s why I won’t spend much more time on this, and get to Step Two.

Step Two is the controversial part.  Establishment and RINO Republicans have to go, or at the very least, have their power base sufficiently short-circuited (example, the RNC) so they can’t do any real damage.  While initiatives like The Precinct Project have gone far in taking the Republican Party away from them and turning it into a real opposition party, it’s only going to get so far.  At some point, the issue with RINOs is going to have to be forced, and they’ll either be gone or stepping into line because their only alternative is unemployment.  That’s where not being a Republican loyalist and not backing all Republican candidates by rote comes into play.

Seriously, why do it?  Some may see RINOs as a lesser evil and it’s their call, but how are we going to work with them?  Do Maine’s Senate twits strike you as on-board with opposing Obama?  Is Lindsey Graham going to show some Republican team spirit and suddenly start treating conservatives like they’re on his side?  Will they ever attempt to work out their differences with us first?

Or are they going to continue what they’ve been doing?  Will they undermine any attempts to stop Obama because they have to Dooooooo Something, or they “know better” than us conservative rubes, or they want to be “historic” and “bipartisan” at America’s expense?  Will they cause the self-destruction of the Republican Party again if they’re ever put back in sufficient numbers?

The answer is demonstrated every time a RINO crosses the aisle and another power grab passes.  They aren’t worth our time and trouble, so don’t give them any.  In fact, some few need to be actively removed even if they lose to Democrats because they’re in a class of their own when it comes to impeding, undermining, or co-opting the kinds of candidates we do want from within.  The Mavericky John McCain falls into this category.

So, to those third party types who want to go a third way:  The Republican Two-Step is a third way.  It’s not a question of giving the Republican Party loyalty, which even I won’t do, because it is not a team.  It’s a convenient box in which we can place conservative, Constitutionalist candidates so the long, hard effort of constructing of a third party from scratch can be avoided.  Time is an issue, but that doesn’t mean we have to cooperate the Republican establishment’s way.