As someone else noted above, there is very little trust in the Democratic and Republican parties. In fact, corruption is rampant in both parties.
The logical solution is to create a new political party - but there's a catch. How do you protect your new party from the same corrupt entities that have taken over the Demopublicans?
The irony of political parties is that it's almost impossible to shield them from infiltrators unless you have some rigid membership rules.
Are you familiar with the term "controlled opposition"? It's basically a synonym for fake leaders. Many alternative parties produce "leaders" and candidates for public office who are are amazingly lame.
For example, I'm a big fan of socialism, in the broad sense of the term. Therefore, I would prefer to vote for socialist candidates. Since I live in "liberal Seattle," there are often socialist candidates on the ballot.
However, I've never discovered a socialist candidate who deserved my vote. Most of them are so bad, logic suggests that they may in fact be operatives (controlled opposition) who are doing all they can to make socialism look bad.
One example is Mary Martin, who ran for Washington State Governor twice and never even submitted a photograph for the Voters Pamphlet - though the Seattle Times (an example of the mainstream media) published her photo shortly before the election.
I used to think the Green Party, with its emphasis on environmental issues, sounded pretty cool. I changed my mind as I got to know some of the people associated with the Green Party of Seattle, including Brita Butler Wall, who got elected to the infamously corrupt Seattle School Board.
Ralph Nader's a more famous example. I voted for him when he ran against George W. Bush and Al Gore. But as I did more research on him after the election, I decided he was just another fraud. Incidentally, Nader was associated with the Green Party for a while.
Compare these people to Eugene Debs, who ran for president on the socialist ticket in 1920, getting nearly a million votes - while in prison! It's hard to think of any contemporary alternative party leader who comes even close to Debs in integrity or stature.
In summary, the entire political system is extremely corrupt in the U.S. In an era of spy satellites and huge computer databases, it's really quite easy for "Big Brother" to monitor citizens' activities (including political parties) and infiltrate them, either demonize them in the media or completely ignore them, etc.
To really understand what I'm saying, try creating a political party yourself. It doesn't have to be an official party; just pretend you want to create a new party. What steps would you take to attract intelligent people who are passionate about reform? What measures would you enact to prevent your party from being manipulated or corrupted?
It's not easy.
EDIT:
Someone requested a few links. I don't think any sane person needs links to verify my charge that corruption is rampant in the U.S. government. It makes daily headlines. It's one of the reasons the middle class is vanishing.
"Controlled opposition" is one of those political buzzwords that's not really well documented or explained in detail (that I'm aware of). In fact, I'm working on a book that will discuss this phenomenon.
In the meantime, check out Ralph Nader's website. Looks like he's more interested in selling books than educating people.
As just one example of lame socialist candidates, consider Mary Martin. The article Why Mary Martin Will Never Win the Washington Governor's Race was published during her first bid for office. Her second performance was just as bad. We could dismiss her as a kook, but what about the party that supported that kook?
There's lots of scattered information about controlled opposition online. Actually, this article looks relatively good...
Controlled Opposition - Your Friend Might Be Your Enemy
You can get into endless arguments whose side specific people are working for, but I certainly agree with what this article says about the "alternative media" (speaking from experience).