Several years back a guy doing these work group things had a exercise he had all do.

1st up identify your party of choice ( had to pick one and it went about 60 / 40 D / R )

2ND went through a series of questions as to your beliefs on taxes, government, about the full spectrum.

3rd compared each of our results with present party positions.

All pretty normal so far except guess what. About 2/3 who said they were R's made choices that were pretty much Libertarian. About 2/3 of the D's ended being more closely aligned in thought to the Green Party. That was the purpose of it I guess. Our political system is designed to protect the present two major parties. Yet if people really voted there own beliefs neither of them could win a election.

Just so I walk the walk here I ended up being rather conservative in it. Which put me at the edges of being a Libertarian ( lost me on the military ) and the Green Party as my views on a citizens social responsibilities move me that way. That was a real shocker for me but it made sense, I guess but I never viewed myself as a Libertarian / Green. But what I find so unbelievably laughable is reading and listening the so called D & R folks rant about the two parties and how one is better than the other. Break the power of special interest ( business, labor, all the above ) feeding money to candidates AND require the budget be balanced ( except in a time of declared war ) so our elected officials can't buy OUR votes but rather have to make the tough decisions ................ would not that be something to see............. elected office holders that actually addressed problems with solutions that had to work.

The other thing the guy did was outline Senator X positions then had us identify what party we thought they came from and state. Now not to do a D&R thing but this one blew me away. Went like this, a New England R is more Liberal than a Southern D. A Midwest D is more conservative than a Florida R. The purpose of this was for us to understand the great diversity of thought and history in our nation AND HOW THE PRESENT TWO PARTIES HAVE PERVERTED IT. What a traditional conservative is ( Barry Goldwater ) or Libertarian ( Ron Paul ) and tradition Liberal is ( FDR ) are absolutely in conflict with the present two parties we have.