There was nothing particularly odd about this post from the Philadelphia Libertarian Examiner. Nothing, that is, until the last line. Every day a new column, blog, or news story comes out telling us that the GOP is in a fight for its life against the Tea Party, which threatens to destroy it from within. It’s always “Tea Party vs. the Establishment” or “GOP Shakeup Imminent,” or some such thing, and this is exciting stuff. But what caught my eye about this Examiner piece was the subtle injection of that little phrase everybody is thinking about, but only a few people are saying.

As primary season continues, candidates come out of the woodwork, congressmen are sent packing by “anti-incumbent fever,” scandals torpedo credibility, and change is on the rise (again), we are revisited by the specter of an old idea long since thought to have passed on, but that lives once again. You have heard whispers of it on the right and the left, shouts of it at tea parties, mention of it at your dinner table. It’s the phrase that we bury every few decades, but that rises from the dead every time we finally drop the shovel and dust off our hands. You know the two little words I’m talking about.

Third party.

Ned Ryun, the president of American Majority, wrote a piece about the third party temptation a few months ago, and I couldn’t have said it better myself. However, now that primary season has begun, Rand Paul has become the Tea Party’s prom queen, and moderate incumbents are dropping like flies, it appears that some hard line anti-establishment types need a reminder of why the Tea Party movement would help itself by remaining exactly that: a movement, rather than a party. I point you first to Ned’s blog on the subject. Also see Laurie Masterson’s piece from yesterday at AmericanMajority.org: “Vote Them All Out?”

Third, consider the historical example of the 1848 presidential election, in which Martin Van Buren, the presidential candidate from the Free Soil Party, took ten percent of the vote on a purely anti-slavery platform, and probably sealed the defeat of anti-slavery New Hampshire Democrat Lewis Cass at the hands of the pro-slavery Virginia Whig Zachary Taylor. In more recent memory, recall the effect of Ross Perot on the 1992 presidential election.

The bottom line is this: now is the time for candidates from the grassroots to throw their hats into the ring. Primary season is meant for all ideologies and candidates to be presented to the people for their approval. To the candidates and activists out there, I encourage you to promote your platform, run your campaign to win, and stand up to the old vanguard. To the voters, I cannot stress how important it is to make your voice heard in the primaries. As Ned Ryun writes, “Those who win primaries and attend party conventions decide what a party is.”

Now, a word of caution. Once primaries finish and we head for the general elections, the third party temptation will take hold. Mark my words. Anywhere it tries to act as a third way, the Tea Party will split the vote formerly monopolized by the GOP, handing victory to liberal democrats every time. Candidates like Steve Levy, the recently defeated candidate for the New York Republican gubernatorial nomination, who are “contemplating” third party forays have far more at stake than their own victory. If Levy and his kin run in a general election against a Republican and a Democrat, there is no reason to expect any outcome other than a democratic win.

The case of Rand Paul is an excellent example of how the primary system should work. A true conservative-ah, what the heck, a libertarian- was nominated to represent the party that traditionally represents conservatives. Kentucky conservatives did what Ned Ryun calls making a party “a creature of their own creation.” Martin Avila at UnitedLiberty.org cautions anti-establishment Tea Partiers in a similar fashion not to turn their backs on the GOP, which so many have forgotten is not set in stone, but in fact malleable. His advice is important for independent-minded conservatives to remember.

Now, don’t go calling me an old-school party-clinging hack just yet. (Come on, I’m a college student.) At my @EricJ_AMajority twitter page, I recently tweeted an interesting column in the Washington Post in which we are told that the GOP should fear the loss of party discipline if Tea Party candidates are elected. As for me, I am willing to sacrifice party discipline for the assurance that my representative will vote according to my best interest. You have all seen the bumper sticker (and many of you probably have it): “Gun control is being able to hit your target.” Now, I propose another redefinition: “Party discipline is being able to vote out your defunct representative in a primary.” Try that on for size.

All of this is to say that change (the good kind) is in the air once again. Primaries are the perfect time for grassroots candidates to enter the race and make their voices heard. When these few months of primaries are over and the race for November begins, we will see what constituents truly want out of their representatives, and inevitably, we will see a few third party races. I cannot, nor will I, tell you how to vote in November, but what I will say is this: we are not in Europe, where elections are contests between ten parties. In the United States, votes for third parties do not simply materialize; they have to come from somewhere. Let us not hand over elections because we are too blinded by ideology to know what is politically prudent. Voting for the lesser of two evils may seem like politics-as-usual, but sometimes it is all we can do. If the worst should happen, the next primary is only a few years away. And that, my friends, is the beauty of the American system.