So to sum it up...Obama is going to serve another term(?)

That's sorta my point though.  He's not telegenic yet his appeal FAR outpaces that of the libretarian party if they ran another candidate.

He's built a lot of foward momentum the last few elections, that may end up wasted soley because he's old as the hills.

If he could successfully pass over the appeal to his son or another... I think you'd be surprised how much headway could be made.

Unlike most of the countries, for a third party to be viable in the US, they might just have to capture the top spot first.

Either that or just an outright revolt of sitting senators of a certain group.  IE say Liberals seeceeding from the Democratic party.  Though that seems only viable when part of the minority party, otherwise why give up those powers.

So perhaps it would be more likely that a block of socially liberal republicans, or Union democrats would scede from their party then caucus with the majority party.

What do Americans think of the idea of proportional representation?

We have become very attached to the idea that our congressman represents us, that is, that he or she is a local individual that really gets into our community. Thus we would have an issue with party lists, where you essentially only get the "elites" from each party in.

I believe PR would fare poorly in America, unless we did PR within states (such that, say, of the 15 or so Representatives you get from Pennsylvania, they would be selected by party lists within the state), partially because the winner-take-all system clashing with the two-party system forces the political parties to stitch together alliances across regions, whereas under PR the Democrats, for instance, could just focus exclusively on getting out the vote on the coasts and in the big cities and not have to worry about what other regions think.

Yes, we like that idea, but it's not true.  Congressmen typically represent their party, or movement (such as the Tea Party), nothing more.  They don't represent us, they represent one flawed one-size-fits-all ideology or the other.

There is effective regional variation. A Chicago Democrat and a Montana Democrat are going to have distinct views on gun control, for instance, simply because of the differences in urban and western rural lifestyle. Similarly, an Orange County Republican and an Oklahoma Republican may have critically different views on, say, contraception.

There is significant pressure within the political parties for everyone to move in lock-step, but the simple reality is that America and Americans are too varied for a 2-party system to be more than two broad coalitions that happen to exist along whatever the broadest divide in society is at the moment.

With proportional representation, we could get more disciplined parties that behaved more ideologically, but then there would be more of them so you could take a party that much more closely matched your personal views, but these parties would be regionally lopsided (imagine a political party centered around the views of Union workers, which would likely be heavily biased towards the broader Great Lakes region), weakening the notion of national unity

Sorry for the double post, but i would like to gauge opinions on potential VP Candidates (to go with whoever wins the GOP nomination), as well as potential candidates for 2016 (assuming Republicans lose on this)

To strategize, i'd say Sam Brownback (Kansas Governor/senator) would be the best VP match for Romney, Bob McDonnell (Virginia Governor) for Santorum, and Tim Pawlenty (Gov Minnesota) for Gingrich

Pawlenty and McDonnell would also likely make good 2016 candidates. I am much less certain as to who is up-and-coming in the Democratic party, oddly, despite them being my party of choice.

Even that might be tricky.

Heck, recently where my parents live they went the opposite way.  Now each city councilmen represents a ward.

Politicians do not represent the average mug citizen. They only represent the ideology their political party believes in. Politicians are guaranteed huge tax payer funded entitlements for life once they retire or get booted out of office. Only 50% of US citizens of voting age bother to vote because it does not matter if either of the two main parties gets into power.

Politicians, on average, tend to represent their financiers.