Continual Rise and Fall of the 3rd-Party

Recent trends indicate that independent parties stand a chance to win-out in upcoming elections. Imagine this, people begin to vote for politicians based on principle and not the "what will win" mentality. Just think of the scenarios. The Republican party may be strong proponents for limited government and fiscal responsibility, but they would be the first to abandon the separation of church and state by inter-mixing religion and politics. Whereas, the liberals may be fine spoken on free speech, but would be the first to advocate government interference in all aspects of society. A 3rd-party system offers the chance for people to abide by a consistent philosophy or at least cause the dominant parties to again switch their values on these apparently 'popular' trend. Sadly, the dominant party will win out and will quickly abandon these principles once they have taken a little sip of power.